Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 154

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Archive 150

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Archive 152

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Spelling out ordinals

I guess I've always just patterned after WP:NUMERAL and spelled out first though ninth. However, I don't see any mention of any preference at WP:ORDINAL. Does that mean WP has no preference in prose between "It was their first anniversary" versus "It was their 1st anniversary"?—Bagumba (talk) 03:32, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Phone Numbers

Consider adding phone number style to the page. Laserbrian (talk) 13:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Hard to imagine more than a handful of articles that would include a phone number. EEng (talk) 14:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

So hard that it might be we have a policy about it. --Izno (talk) 14:45, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Of course. I was just leaving room for the occasional article saying, "In the victim's pocket was found a matchbook from Rick's Café Américain, in which was written 'Call me, handsome – 212/555-0123'" or whathaveyou. EEng (talk) 14:58, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

A handful? You need 911. See you in Soulsville, handsome. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:15, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

8675-309's your number, right? Don't want to miss you. --Izno (talk) 16:36, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Someone seems to be impersonating me ;-) HandsomeFella (talk) 16:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Grouping of digits in non-base ten

I've just wandered of to the Pi article and found some interesting groupings of digits. In binary and hexadecimal, digits were grouped by fours (which makes sense, four being the square of two and the square root of sixteen). In sexagesimal, it's not clear from this example whether there is any grouping but the radix point is a semicolon and the comma is used to separate the two-digit digits (yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense but look at the example & you'll get what I mean). I wouldn't suggest cluttering up the section on grouping of digits with such details but perhaps it would be good to mention that the rules stated there apply to base ten with a pointer to (an)other section(s) where details of writing numbers in non-base ten are given. Jimp 01:31, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Has editor time been wasted arguing over this on article talk pages? If not, then MOS should not be further bloated. EEng (talk) 04:24, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

That's a fair point. I only had in mind a few words but, yeah, bloat is bloat. Jimp 05:18, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

It always starts with just a few words, but give 'em an inch (2.54 cm) and they'll take a mile (1.60934 km). EEng (talk) 05:26, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

That's true. Jimp 08:11, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Beg to differ. I think we can tolerate 1.60934 km because it's 4000000 nm - which is approximately 5 % of the distance to the Sun - less than a mile (1.609344 km). Doesn't that give us some leeway? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:07, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

If 4000000 nanometers is 5% of the distance to the sun, then the sun is a lot closer than I had been led to believe. Can you rework the problem in furlongs? EEng (talk) 01:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Two queries

Experts, please, could you confirm that >30 without space is correct, analogous to +30 and −30; contrasting with x > y? If so, could it be included in the appropriate MOSNUM table?

And also, I'm finding people writing degrees Centrigrade with a circular symbol, whereas the one MOSNUM uses, which I've always used (option-zero on a Mac) is slightly oval in shape. Do you people find this problem too?

Thanks. Tony (talk) 12:37, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Not an expert but see ° article for your second query.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

This is why I use symbolics for stuff like this e.g. °. EEng (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Got it from that WP article: option-shift-8. Great. Tony (talk) 06:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Continuing re >

The relevant text from ISO 80000-1:2009 reads

"A plus or minus sign before a number (or a quantity), used to indicate “same sign” or “change of sign”, is a monadic operator and shall not be separated from the number by a space (see Example 3). However, for operations, signs and symbols, there shall be a space on both sides of the sign or symbol, as shown in the examples given in Example 4. See also 7.1.3. For signs denoting a relation, such as =, < and >, there shall also be a space on both sides."

Therefore ">30" without a space is incorrect. The text is followed by the following examples (cited verbatim except apart from punctuation)

"EXAMPLE 3: A Celsius temperature from −7 °C to +5 °C."
"EXAMPLE 4: 5 + 2; 5 − 3; n ± 1,6; D < 2 mm; > 5 mm"

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 13:10, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Donervogel. Tony (talk) 06:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Considering the ridiculous prices ISO charges, and their inability to distinguish corporate research labs with large budgets from ordinary individuals who just write numbers, times, and dates in the ordinary course of their lives, plus the crappy job they did with ISO 8604, I'm not willing to consider the views of ISO. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Which is why WP's styleguide trumps it. Tony (talk) 06:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

It's not a matter of what's "correct", but rather what looks good and reads well, and as usual style guides will differ. Tony1, where does your question arise? EEng (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Offwiki. I use en.WP MOS as my default offwiki style guide (e.g., in Word), which means I need to know the keystrokes on the Mac. Question answered in that article linked above. Tony (talk) 06:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree "correct" is not really the criterion, but "ISO-compliant" (which is what I really meant) would have sounded pedantic. Your point is that the purpose of mosnum is to establish a housestyle, and that housestyle is not required to follow ISO. I agree with that too, but my point is that ISO standards, which go through a development period of 3 years or more, are there to make use of if we choose to. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:08, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Script-assisted conversion of Retrieved YYYY-MM-DD

Recall the September 2013 rendition.

Recall the May 2014 rendition.

User:Walter Görlitz again converts reference date formats massively. At a glance it appears to me that nothing has changed but the edit summary, now "date formats per MOS:DATEFORMAT by script" [1] (and appeal to STRONGNAT in subsequent summary) in place of the previous explicit abuse of MOSNUM. --P64 (talk) 02:19, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

And you decide to edit war over a completely correct date format. The problem is that the tool that used to generate the date formats used the ISO-8601 format, but some bureaucrats decided that because the source code for that was not freely available, it could not longer be used to generate references. The new tool does not use ISO-8601 dates and prefers DMY formats. So either fix the references in the article you appear to want to WP:OWN or update your sense of what's appropriate. Do whatever you want to the article, but except in rare cases (scientific content and others where the date format is preferred) , ISO-8601 should cease to be used for articles dates. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:25, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: ISO-8601 should cease to be used for articles dates is completely against agreed policy in MOS:DATEUNIFY. Using a tool is no excuse for acting against the MOS. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:14, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Peter, unfortunately, there has been and continues to be an on-going and widespread problem in which other editors using various auto-editor programs add inappropriate/inconsistent date formats to articles that already have well established MDY or DMY date formats at the article level. Frankly, it is obnoxious for any editor using an auto-editor program to leave their setting set on the ISO (or DMY) format without consideration to the established date formats of the articles; oddly, I rarely see anyone using an auto-editor program to insert inconsistent MDY dates into articles. I have several very large watch lists -- including those for international athletes written in both British/Commonwealth English and American English -- and hardly a day goes by when I do not have to waste time cleaning up after auto-editors who insert inappropriately formatted dates into these articles. And that thoughtless conduct is certainly no less contrary to the guidelines than that complained of above. As I see the same editor names repeatedly, no doubt some of this is the result of ISO proponents who simply think ISO dates are "cool." MOS:DATEUNIFY is a two-way street, which contemplated reciprocal courtesy for the established date formats of articles, and it was not intended as a beachhead for ISO proponents to insert their preferred style into articles in which it did not previously exist. If this continues to be a problem, there may come a time in the near future to revisit the permissibility of ISO dates per MOS:DATEUNIFY. I will also remind everyone of the final sentence of MOS:DATEUNIFY:

"When a citation style does not expect differing date formats, it is permissible to normalize publication dates to the article body text date format, and/or access/archive dates to either, with date consistency being preferred."

In other words, in the absence of an established citation style with differing date formats, it is permissible to conform dates to the predominant style of the article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:00, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. And I will say in the absence of a template to inform editors that a style is being used, you have no leg on which to stand. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

@Dirtlawyer1: no-one is arguing about standardizing access/archive dates throughout an article if the article is inconsistent. They should be standardized to the predominant style for such dates. Note that the section you quoted allows access/archive dates to be normalized to "either", i.e. the article text style or YYYY-MM-DD. If the wording is used to allow User:Walter Görlitz to replace consistent YYYY-MM-DD access/archive dates then it also allows any other editor to do the reverse. Neither should happen; the predominant existing style in an article should be respected as per WP:CITEVAR.

Peter, you know me and you know that I am a reasonable person; above all, I strongly support stylistic consistency within an article. When I am writing about an Australian athlete, I honor Australian spelling and stylistic conventions; when I'm writing about an American subject, I use American practices. In my personal experience, the ISO gnomers don't care enough to conform an entire article to their preferred ISO style. They just drop several ISO dates into the footnotes of an article that has a pre-existing and well established citation style and leave it to someone else who cares enough to clean up behind them. And, yes, I'm aware of what the quoted sentence says, but no one gets to insert a handful of ISO dates into an article that already has consistent date formatting and then claim that it's inconsistent, or just leave it for others to argue about later. It is an obnoxious practice, especially when the article has no ISO dates and has been tagged for "DMY" or "MDY" dates; these tags are routinely ignored. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:55, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I hope I'm equally reasonable! I support (of course) cleaning up odd ISO formats for access/archive dates; we are entirely in agreement on that. However, the reverse also applies; odd non-ISO formats in an article otherwise using ISO for access/archive dates should be cleaned up to ISO. If I start a new article, I always use ISO formats for access/archive dates; it's quite against current policy and guidelines to change these, whether or not another editor has added the odd non-ISO format for these fields. If I edit an existing article, I try to keep to the existing format (although I have to admit that I sometimes forget since overwhelmingly I'm correctly using ISO for access/archive dates).

The tag for "DMY" or "MDY" dates is irrelevant; it's clear from the project page and from previous RfCs that these tags do not apply to access/archive dates. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:41, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: a template informing editors of the date style used in the article text is for information only. I'd be reluctant to see yet another such edit notice, but I guess we could have one just for access/archive dates. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Alternately, add a secondary optional parameter to the two existing "use DMY dates"/"use MDY dates" templates that add in the reference style if it is determined to be ISO, otherwise assumed to be the same as the prose style. Avoids extra templates, gracefully grandfathers all existing uses. --MASEM (t) 20:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

And I will say in the absence of a template to inform editors that a style is being used, you have no leg on which to stand.; Translated: "Since I can't be bothered to manually check an article's citation formatting when using my script-assisted tool, I will instead accuse others of laziness." Honestly Walter, there is probably no action that carries less value to this project that a pedantic need to change a date formatting style simply because you don't like what is being used. You do a lot of great gnoming work overall, but this is just a waste of time. Reso lute 20:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Correct translation: If you can't mark an article it will be modified because it’s a correct action. Actually the only action that carries less value to the rest of Wikipedia is editors who think that they live in a bubble and everyone else on WIkipedia has to read thier minds. If your "project" can't be bothered to communicate with other editors then don't be surprised if wer are WP:BOLD and edit the article according to what your guidelines state. I will say this one more time DO NOT PING ME TO T7HEIS DISCUSSION AGAIN. DO NOT LINK TO MY USER PAGE AGAIN. I DO NOT WANT TO BE ALERTED TO YOUR PEDANTIC WIKILAWYERING. You give Wikipedia a bad name. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

First off, I never pinged you to this discussion, so aim your petulent whining at the right target. Second, if the citation formatting is consistent, or even mostly consistent, we should not need to add more templates for the benefit of lazy bot operators or script users. It should not be my job to clean up after your laziness. Reso lute 20:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

To chime in a bit late: It's annoying for readers and editors alike when the date formats don't match. There's nothing wrong with normalizing ISO dates to whatever is used in the rest of the article. What is wrong is editwarring over it. If someone wants to force ISO access-date parameters, just move on. I really don't care for the argument pro or {[em|con}} about whether it's okay to just normalize date formats, in the absence of other more constructive changes. I don't think it's my job or anyone else's job to police how anyone spends their volunteer time here. All that said, yes, it is the duty of bot, AWB, and script operators to look at the articles they edit one after another to see if they already have an established date format. Yes, this slows down the trawling, but c'est la vie. I also concur with this: "In my personal experience, the ISO gnomers don't care enough to conform an entire article to their preferred ISO style. They just drop several ISO dates into the footnotes of an article that has a pre-existing and well established citation style and leave it to someone else who cares enough to clean up behind them.". However, this really doesn't seem to be limited to ISO date fanciers; lots of editors just slap in whatever they prefer (or whatever their tools do by default) and move on without a second thought. There is no ISO conspiracy or anything. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:57, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

shortcut for uncertain dates

I think that a shortcut would be helpful to the paragraph labeled: "Uncertain, incomplete, or approximate dates". What would such a shortcut be named? Hmains (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Unless punctuation isn’t allowed, how about WP:DATE? ?—Odysseus 1479 04:57, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I think WP:APPROXDATE might be less trouble-prone. EEng (talk) 07:39, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. WP:DATE? could exist as a shortcut, but we shouldn't advertise it. It doesn't work if you type it into the URL bar, getting converted to WP:DATE on the fly. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 06:49, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Television seasons and episodes

I have found there is not a consistent way to notate season and episode for television series. Sometimes they are written as 1X19; 01x19; season 01, episode 19; or season 1, episode 19. Which is preferable? (I lean towards the last one.) LA (T) @ 06:15, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

This should be discussed on the talk page of the article in question. I don't see a need for standardization of this across WP. (And if we tried, imagine the yelling and shouting...) EEng (talk) 06:21, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I will take it to Wikiproject Television. LA (T) @ 21:08, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I wish I'd had the sense to suggest that. Good idea. EEng (talk) 21:47, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

EEng: And done, discussion now at Wikiproject Television. LA (T) @ 23:41, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Whatever comes out of that should be "ratified" here and put into MOSNUM. The TV wikiproject's editors are not the only ones who have to refer to TV episodes. For my part, I've recommended plain English (season 2, episode 13, British: series 2, episode 13), abbreviation thereof if necessary (sea. 2, ep. 13, Brit.: ser. 2, ep. 13), and when tables or whatever need a highly compressed format, use s2e13, which is more parseable than geekery like 02×13. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:51, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I disagree about the ratify-it-here bit, and to explain why, here's my standard boilerplate on the subject:

A. It is an axiom of mine that something belongs in MOS only if (as a necessary, but not sufficient test) either:

1. There is a manifest a priori need for project-wide consistency (e.g. "professional look" issues such as consistent typography, layout, etc. -- things which, if inconsistent, would be noticeably annoying, or confusing, to many readers reader); OR
2. Editor time has, and continues to be, spent litigating the same issue over and over on numerous articles, either

(a) with generally the same result (so we might as well just memorialize that result, and save all the future arguing), or
(b) with different results in different cases, but with reason to believe the differences are arbitrary, and not worth all the arguing -- a final decision on one arbitrary choice, though an intrusion on the general principle that decisions on each article should be made on the Talk page of that article, is worth making in light of the large amount of editor time saved.

B. There's a further reason that disputes on multiple articles should be a gating requirement for adding anything to MOS: without actual situations to discuss, the debate devolves into the "Well, suppose an article says this..."–type of hypothesizing -- no examples of which, quite possibly, will ever occur in the real life of real editing. An analogy: the US Supreme Court (like the highest courts of many nations) refuses to rule on an issue until multiple lower courts have ruled on that issue and been unable to agree. This not only reduces the highest court's workload, but helps ensure that the issue has been "thoroughly ventilated", from many points of view and in the context of a variety of fact situations, by the time the highest court takes it up. I think the same thinking should apply to any consideration of adding a provision to MOS.

EEng (talk) 01:00, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Formatting in bilateral competitions

I have created a Template:Score (it was an unused WP:CNR to Help:Score) which I intend to use inline for results in bilateral competitions (rather than in tables and infoboxes, where more specialist templates are often available) . (Template:result perhaps oddly redirects to {{medal}}, so that's not available.) This is really just a shortcut to avoid the tiresome and error-prone need to put these into {{nowrap}} or equivalent.

Now, to my surprise we seem to have no guidance on how such scores should be formatted. While of course it might vary from one competition to another, e.g. we have the specialist {{tennis score}}, I think we could do with some default guidance. In its absence, the template I've created uses an unspaced hyphen between the two partcipants' scores, but I can soon add sep= and space= parameters if need be: that of course would get a little cumbersome, but could be usefully wrapped in templates specific to a given domain.

Template {{score}} now uses unspaced en-dash and that seems best to me. Why not? --P64 (talk) 19:24, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Really where I started with this is that {{range}} is not suitable for representing ranges other than dates, and even then, it doesn't work properly if the second date is abbreviated (e.g. {{range|1981|89}} produces 1981–89, even though is perfectly OK per MOSNUM). I do date ranges a lot in biographies, and although trivial (and of course I use {{birth date}} and all that), it's the repetition that leads me to think a template would be useful. (For that matter, we could also create {{birth and death}} and {{birth and death and age}} as shortcuts to wrap those.) Si Trew (talk) 08:14, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

P64, to the best my knowledge, all sports WikiProjects use unspaced ndashes (either the ASCII character or HTML coding) for win-loss records and game/match scores. If a particular WikiProject or editors for a particular sport are doing something else, they are definitely the odd man out. The Manual of Style answer you're seeking is buried in MOS:DASH. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:28, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Era system

According to the Era style guidline, "Either [AD or CE] convention may be appropriate." However, I see NPOV issues with using "AD" and "BC" in articles for reasons including:

WP:NPOV says:

Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice.

In that case, use of "AD" and "BC" would be direct violations due to the controversial nature of what "AD" and "BC" denote. For example, using a date styled "66 BC" would be a direct violation of WP:NPOV as it is only an abbreviation of "66 years before Christ," which many people would disagree with as not every Wikipedia reader is Christain and would be a violation of WP:NPOV for stating opinions as facts.

We have to have to realize that Wikipedia is a global project, and while "AD" and "BC" may be accepted in the Western hemisphere, we have to remember that the Western hemisphere is not the only place English is spoken and Wikipedia should be the most universal as possible, and while weather to use British or American English may have no universal answer, era style does and that system is the Common Era system.
The abbreviation "AD" can be translated to "year of our lord," which means if "AD" is used directly on Wikipedia it can violate the First-person pronouns policy, which says:

Wikipedia articles must not be based on one person's opinions or experiences, so never use I, my, or similar forms (except in quotations). Also avoid we, us, and our: We should note that some critics have argued against our proposal (personal rather than encyclopedic).

--Proud User (talk) 00:59, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I see some issues with your proposal.

AD and BC are in common use in the English speaking world. Plenty of people do not know what CE and BCE are.
Banning AD and BC is hardly NPOV, you are discriminating against those that wish to use it.
CE and BCE have removed the religious words but are still based on the same supposed date of Christ's birth that AD and BC are based on. Note that serious scholars do not argue that Christ never existed, only whether his claim to be God was true or not.
CE and BCE do not address the global issue. Are you proposing we use dates based on the the current Japanese emperor, or Islamic dates, or the coming to power of China's current government? All these are date systems currently in use.

The existing guideline allows for both forms. Editors wishing to use the supposedly non-religious CE and BCE are free to do so and editors wishing to use the traditional AD and BC are also free to do so. Stepho talk 03:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I see what you are saying and have put serious thought into this.

Per Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not censored "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive—even exceedingly so." Readers that do not know what "CE" and "BCE" means might be offended that Wikipedia is using terms they do not know about, but that doesn't stop Wikipedia from using them. For example, not everybody knows what "circa" means although Wikipedia still uses that term.
Per your second argument, why does Wikipedia have any policies if they are "discriminating" against those who do not approve of those policies?
The point of "CE" and "BCE" is that they happen to be more neutral and avoids stating opinions as facts. Even though most scholars agree Jesus existed does not mean all scholars agree he exist if and is hence still an opinion and therefore violates WP:NPOV for stating opinions as facts.
We have to remember that this is the English Wikipedia and the common era system is accepted in most English-speaking cultures, Simalar arguments include weather Wikipedia should use an English or Japanese term to describe a concept, which because this is the English Wikipedia the English term would be chosen As a side note, "AD" is Latin. --Proud User (talk) 10:14, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I support allowing either the AD notation or the CE notation for all the reasons expressed over tens of thousands of lines of discussion in this talk page since 2004. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:18, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

That particular argument is 20 years, 2 months and 4 days old and between that and other arguments there has been no consensus, which is why we are talking about it now.--Proud User (talk) 18:30, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The fact that people have brought this up a few times over the course of the last 11 years does not mean that there has not been consensus for the status quo. I would endorse what others have said in support of the current guideline and see little appetite for reviewing this point. Kahastok talk 18:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Jc3s5h (even though he removed my "outbreak" counter :P ). In this day and age AD/BC is a convention period. The stupid thing about CE/BCE is that they are still tied to the same beliefs, but pretend not to be. EEng (talk) 02:46, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the first half of that, but just about everything about our calendar is equally “stupid“. By the same token, calling today Thursday, October 29 could be taken to imply belief in Thor, that this is the eighth month of the year, and that a lunation is just ending, but in reality none of those inferences is the least bit warranted.—Odysseus 1479 10:22, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Think of it this way: "66 years before common era" sounds way more neutral that "66 years before Christ."--Proud User (talk) 23:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Do you truly imagine you're the first to raise this issue? Read the abundant Talk archives on this, and if you have something new to offer let us know. EEng (talk) 02:03, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

There are some new things I want to point out.

The word "common" in "common era" means that it is based the Gregorian Calendar, the most commonly used calendar in the world. Thinking of it that way makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, "AD" attempts to be based on the birthdate of Jesus in Christian mythology. However, most scholars believe the if Jesus ever did exist that he was born between 7 BCE and 2 BCE, not 1 BCE as "AD" would make one believe.
"CE" is prefersd by most scholars and academics, probably because it is more neutral and universal.
These dates are not original to Christian mythology. If you look at Greek mythology, they had something called the age of Pisces which lasted from around 1 BCE to 2012. As you can see, the startdate of the age of the Pisces starts the same time Jesus's supposed birthdate is and ends when Christains thought the world would end (but were wrong). Pisces —like Jesus— was also represented by a fish (just to point something out).

--Proud User (talk) 12:07, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

A quick read of Proud_User talk page reveals several misunderstandings of Wikipedia polices. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 18:35, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The previous comment was deleted by Proud User, citing WP:CIVIL. I restored it because it wasn't a personal attack, nor did it contain anything vicious or nasty. It's just pointing out that Proud User is a relatively new editor. Which means that he may not understand our complex system and the long history behind it. It also reminds us to keep the discussion civil (which it mostly has been by WP standards). Stepho talk 20:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And it's been a veritable miracle of civility by dates-and-numbers standards. By this point in the discussion we'd typically have three blocks, two retirements-in-disgust, one never-darken-my-door-again, an SPI, two ANI threads, and maybe a desysop. See e.g. [2]. EEng (talk) 13:38, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd prefer we used BCE/CE for neutrality reasons myself, but every time this comes up there is neither a consensus to do away with BC/AD, nor a consensus to do away with BCE/CE, either. What we really should do is limit BC/AD to contexts in which it is particularly pertinent, e.g. New Testament scholarship, and European history between AD 1 and the Enlightenment, the period in which Christianity gradually came to and long held supra-national political power in the West. BC/AD should not be used for non-Western topics, modern topics (other than Christianity-specific ones, like Seventh Day Adventist Church), pre-Christian topics, or even biblical topics that are also central to Judaism and/or Islam, nor for scientific topics that also transect Christian lines (e.g. archaeology of a site with purported Christian significance).

Some additional rationale on this

Some of the prior argument about whether or not Jesus existed is off-topic and irrelevant. The BCE/CE system accepts the date range as the common calendar in the West, nothing more. From a non-Christian viewpoint, this is just as arbitrary and acceptable as the Celsius or Fahrenheit temperature scales, as long as we're not forced to conceptualize it as "Before Christ" and the Latin for "the Year of Our Lord". Any such scale has to have numbers on it in order to be usable, and there was no compelling reason to try to get people to adopt a different scale, with conflicting numbers. BCE/CE is not an acceptance of anything about Christian dogma (and even among scholars certain of Jesus' historical existence, his actual birth date is not known; BC/AD dates are an observed, traditional approximation that became the liturgical and later the Western secular calendar; Christ being born literally at the beginning of what we call AD 1 is not a proven fact, and most biblical scholars believe it's off by 2–6 years late). The "BCE/CE dates are just as Christian, so we should use BC/AD instead" argument is invalid on its face, equivalent to an assertion that anyone who treats Christmas, that most commercialized and secularized of holidays, as a holiday at all is necessarily a true believer in Christianity.

Anyway, this perennial argument really has a lot in common with previous MOSNUM discussions, like standardized presentation of other units. We write that someone is 6 feet 2 inches tall (and provide the metric conversion, or vice versa), and eschew non-standardized presentations like "6-foot-2", no matter how common they are. The same reasoning applies here, so the fact that we still practically encourage BC/AD is essentially a self-proving case of pro-Christian bias. I really don't care, as long as it's confined to topics where that makes sense in the context. Similarly, it's perfectly reasonable to give Islamic dates in Islam-heavy articles, as long as we provide the CE conversion. We'd do that, too, with BC/AD dates if BCE/CE used a different scale; the only reason we don't write "23 BC (23 BCE)" is redundancy. If the BCE/CE scale had a year zero, with 1 AD and 1 CE being the same, for example, we actually would write "23 BC (22 BCE)" when using BC dates. BC/AD are only a problem when we impose them on contexts in which Christianity is not a central theme, for the same reason that we would not impose Islamic dates on those contexts either (and it's mostly BC that's the problem, since we don't write "2015 AD"). Also for the same reason, we don't use long-scale numbers, or Indian units like the krore, outside of contexts in which they're needed (and in which we explain them, either directly or with a link to the article about them).

I'd support a move to circumscribe the use of BC/AD more tightly, while of course linking BCE and CE on first occurrence as we already do. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 06:47, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish. I prefer that we use BCE/CE to remain or become neutral. I would support his suggestion of limiting BC/AD to contexts in which it is relevant. 2015 11 18 11:39:54 kk (talk)

Oh, is that what all that said? EEng (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Template producing incompatible format

I've just seen someone using {{Birth based on age as of date}} in the lead sentence, to generate "(born 1996/1997" for a person known to be age n on date ddmmyyy (here). It looked a nice idea (I struggle with the calculation so often for this kind of case - it's like the convenience of using {{convert}} for metrications), but the output disagrees with WP:APPROXDATE. Just thought it worth a mention here. I've commented at Template talk:Birth based on age as of date, suggesting that it would be useful if someone could add a parameter to the template to generate a MOS-compliant output for use in lead sentences. It may well be that the formats produced by the template are OK in other contexts like infoboxes, of course. PamD 08:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

This is being resolved - Trappist the monk is kindly adding a parameter to the template so that it can be made to produce MOS-compatible output. Brilliant! PamD 13:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, the virgule (forward slash) is actually recommended in some style guides for cases like this. I'm not suggesting MoS is wrong, but it might be worth looking at style guides again to see if this is a type of case worth distinguishing. It's also why so many sports wikiprojects insist on the slash format. That format is conventionally (in some conventions) used to indicate a year range that does not correspond to the calendar year, such as a sport season that crosses the calendar year boundary, a "Winter 2014/2015" issue of a serial publication, or (as here) an uncertain birth year calculated from a known age at time of death. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 22:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

The precision of homogenous data in tables

There has been some discussion about how best to apply MOS:LARGENUM to the table at 2015_in_film#Highest-grossing_films. There is a general acceptance that the data as presented has an unnecessary level of precision, but there is some disagreement about which solution would be beteter i.e. more MOS compliant. If at all possible could we get a MOS perspective on the different versions at Talk:2015_in_film#Table_format? Betty Logan (talk) 12:06, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

hex constants

The article seems to indicate that hex constants should always be in C 0x... form. Seems to me that in cases describing specific systems that use other forms, one should use the appropriate form. For example, in describing OS/360 assembly language, one should use the appropriate OS/360 X'...' form. (I have posted with this form in many newsgroups, and never had anyone confused by it.) But I agree, in cases where there is no obvious specific form, C form is a good choice. Gah4 (talk) 07:58, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 22:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. In css style, we write style="background:#ab098F". I note that upopercase/lowercase are interchangeable in this. Also, Unicode defines an East-Asian wide form character subset (0-9A-F) as correct hexadecimal symbols too (though not likely to be used in enwiki). -DePiep (talk) 11:38, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

B/CE in religious scriptures?

MOSNUM now says: "BC and AD are the traditional ways of referring to this era. BCE and CE are common in some scholarly texts and religious writings."

IMO it is more plausible that BC and AD are used in religious writings. -DePiep (talk) 17:45, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I suspect BCE and CE might be more common in religious writing, when the subject of the writing is something other than Christianity. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:13, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Could be, but then why omit 'religious' from the B/CE notation? -DePiep (talk) 18:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what you're getting at. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:50, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Who's on first? EEng (talk) 04:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

: I'd expect the text would note that "Before Christ" is used in religious texts. (Or leave the word 'religious' out completely). -DePiep (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually religious writing often used BCE/CE. As do the pastors at the last two churches I attended. Guettarda (talk) 21:40, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

That sounds unusual, but I don't know what they are taught in their training these days. Dbfirs 21:43, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

My experience is that scholarly work uses CE/BCE (both religious and non-religious and including readings I did in theological college) and non-scholarly work used AD/BC. Most people don't even know what CE/BCE is but are perfectly comfortable using AD/BC regardless of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). Stepho talk 22:15, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

There are other religions apart from Christianity. People writing about them don't always think it appropriate to use BC and AD, and may quite reasonably prefer BCE and CE. But can I just check you're reading the MOS text in the same way I do? I read "some scholarly texts and religious writings" as a good English phrasing of "some scholarly texts and some religious writings". I wonder if you're reading it as "some scholarly texts and all religious writings" instead? NebY (talk) 22:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

You're missing the point by 180°. No one here denies B/CE is used in certain religious sritings. The point is: why is nothing similar is stated for BC/AD? Of course, best is to leave out any reference to religion, since it does not help as MOS and it appears with both option i.e. zero information. -DePiep (talk) 07:57, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. NebY (talk) 08:26, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I made a bold edit [3] vague-ifying the bit about what kinds of sources might use which style, because (it seems to me) it doesn't change MOS' actual recommendation for what to do in articles (which comes right after the bit I changed) yet is causing vexation. This is not meant to foreclose possible discussion about changing the recommendations on when/whether to use AD/BC vs. CE/BCE, just resolve what seems to be a bit of text people are arguing over when it doesn't really matter. (Personally, BTW, I would oppose any change that suggests AD/BC is somehow to be deprecated.) Anyway, I hope my esteemed fellow editors will feel free to revert, or improve, what I've done if they don't think it's really the best solution. EEng (talk) 22:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

An improvement. Next step: leave out 'certain topics' wording, because that does not mean anything. -DePiep (talk) 07:57, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think the idea is to indicate that some kinds of sources do use CE/BCE routinely. If we just say e.g. "AD/BC is the traditional format, but CE/BCE is sometimes used" then it sort of sounds like CE/BCE, when it's used, is just the source's whim. Do you have text to suggest? EEng (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

This being MOS, "used in some places" does not help anyone. One should either give a list, or leave out that "some places" weasel completely. The list-option does not sound good, because that suggests authority (research, sources) so better not igniting that. Especially since the main line is: "Both pairs are OK". -DePiep (talk) 20:03, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

We are asking the wrong question. We have been trying to make the split according to whether the topic is religious or non-religious. Repeating what I said above, my experience is that scholarly writing tends to use CE/BCE instead of AD/BC, regardless of whether it is Christian or non-Christian. The average person on the street knows nothing about CE/BCE and instead use AD/BC, regardless of whether he is religious or not and regardless of whether the topic is religious or not. Non-Christian religious writers will often use their traditional calendar (eg Jewish, Muslim, Hindu) but that is not choosing between CE/BCE and AD/BC, so we don't have to worry about that here.

The split between CE/BCE and AD/BC is based on the target audience being scholarly or not and has little to do with religion. Since WP is aimed at the non-scholarly audience, it seems that AD/BC is perfect acceptable in the majority of cases. We can allow CE/BCE according to an article's original editor in a similar manner to how we allow them to choose British vs American spelling according to WP:ENGVAR. Stepho talk 05:30, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Seems to me that BCE is less confusing than CE, as BCE looks a lot like BC. One might read it, wonder why there is an E, and figure it means BC. CE is much less obvious. I don't know if that matters at all, though. In some cases, one should follow the reference being used. Gah4 (talk) 08:37, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Non-Christian religious writers do indeed use the Western Dionysian era system Calendar era. I'm sure there are others, but WikiProject Judaism, for one, in their Manual of Style states: "Naming conventions for Hellenistic Judaism, Dead Sea scrolls, and other Second Temple era sources such as archaeological inscriptions and papyri, are generally, whether by secular or religious academic authors, made following the SBL Handbook of Style." The SBL Handbook of Style section 8.1.2 ERAS, states "The preferred style is B.C.E. and C.E. (with periods). If you use A.D. and B.C., remember that A.D. precedes the date and B.C. follows it." Wikipedia's style guide omits the periods, so WikiProject Judaism does as well. But any proposal to deprecate the use of BCE/CE, if that's what's being suggested, will require a widely advertised formal RfC. Mojoworker (talk) 08:52, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

The obvious fix for the "and religious writings" is to change it to "and non-Christian religious writings". However, the more serious problem is that "BCE and CE are common in some scholarly texts and religious writings" is misleading, bordering on activistic/propagandistic against BCE/CE. These are in fact common in much more than "scholarly and [non-Christian] religious" material, and growing more common every day. Virtually every educated atheist/agnostic/secularist uses them by preference, and many who understand they're not writing for a Christian religious context do it, as well. The major exception is that much journalism in the West (especially American) reverts to BC/AD habitually, because of the lowest-common-denominator factor in news writing. On WP, the implication of the present wording is "BC/AD should always be used except for ivory-tower academic topics", and this impression is completely false and does not represent actual consensus (among MoS editors, or among our editorship at large). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 21:25, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

How do you use these years in a citation? If you use "c. 78" or "c. 78 CE" for example, there's an error thrown: "Check date values in: |date= (help)". For example, see Giresun#References. See the ref by Pliny the Elder. - Paul2520 (talk) 20:04, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

[Begin rant]In my view, how to write citations is covered by WP:Citing sources, not WP:MOS or WP:MOSNUM. "Citing sources" allows any consistent style, two of which are described at Help:Citation Style 1 and Help:Citation Style 2 (that is, citation templates; recall that an article need not use citation templates as long as it is consistent and a consensus exists. So the talk pages associated with those help pages would be the ideal place to ask this question. [End rant]

If you are using templates, the minimum year is 100 due to the limitations of the software that supports the templates. But there is an exception: |orig-year=. This is free-form text, and something like "c. 90 CE" can be entered. This is almost always what you want, because Wikipedia editors are almost always looking at modern transcriptions of ancient sources (or maybe even guesses about what modern scholars thought the ancient sources might have said). Since you cite where you read it, |date= would be the date of the modern source, and |orig-year= would be the date of the ancient source.

Since years greater than or equal to 100 aren't too confusing, there is no need to add AD or CE, so doing so is not supported in the templates. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

There should be a space before %

The brochure of the International System of Units declares in chapter 5: "a space separates the number and the symbol %". I think this should be used in Wikipedia as well. - Ssolbergj (talk) 11:46, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Far commoner practice is not to leave a space. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
No doubt both styles (spaced, unspaced) will be found in one respected style guide or another -- ISU is not some kind of master authority -- so this is a great example of something which is simply arbitrary house style. I agree with Necrothesp that no-space is probably far more common, and for better or worse it's WP's established. If you think that should be changed, you're going to have to make a very strong argument that there will be a real benefit to be gained for the trouble. EEng (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology can't get other US federal government agencies to show a preference for SI, nor can they get those agencies that do, on occasion, use SI to follow the NIST suggested style. If they can't even get their colleagues to pay any attention to them, why should we? Jc3s5h (talk) 18:09, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

One reason for preferring no space is that the space would have to be a non-breaking one to avoid bad line wraps, and many editors seem to find these difficult to use. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:16, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point. But really, I think the overwhelming consideration here is that we have the convention we have, and unless someone can give a really compelling reason for even opening a new discussion, we won't be soaking up editor time with this. There are just too many other things to do. EEng (talk) 18:51, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Concur with Necrothesp, EEng, and PC. MoS is based on common academic style (mostly from CMoS and Oxford/Hart's), and only follows specific organizational standards like ISU, SI, ISO, ANSI, whatever, when one of them fills a vacuum, usually a vacuum of consistency and comprehensiveness. We do not slavishly follow every recommendation of any particular "authority" when it comes to general English usage (% is used in everyday business, news, and other formal and semiformal writing, not limited to technical contexts). We do what makes the most sense for our readers and our ability to communicate with them. In general English writing, the "47 %" style looks to me like went out of fashion several generations ago (albeit considerably later than the "now it's time ;for a spaced semicolon" style, which appears to have died around WWI). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 21:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
I find myself agreeing with Ssolbergj 100 % on this point. The percentage symbol is a dimensionless unit symbol like "rad" or "Np". As such it should be treated in the same way, with a space. The compelling reason sought by EEng? Harmonisation of style, the self-stated purpose of the MOS (plus a personal preference for consistency with ISO/IEC 80000). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:47, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but that scores a mere 20% on my compellingnessization scale. Personally I'd need to feel at least 70% compellingized to even think about reopenizing this. EEng (talk) 23:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Concur with EEng et al. Common practice is to not use spaces before other non-letter unit symbols like the degrees, minutes, and seconds symbols. This is consistent. Jeh (talk) 01:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

That's another good point. Note that part of the point of ' " % ° etc. is compactness, which would be squandered by inserting a space (or "blank" as we old-timers call them). EEng (talk) 02:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Ifindthecompactnessargumentsomewhatuncompelling.Dondervogel 2(talk)08:58,30December2015(UTC)

Noted. Jeh (talk) 10:19, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

"ISU is not some kind of master authority." Well, the International System of Units probably is the closest thing to a master authority within numbers and science on earth. - Ssolbergj (talk) 11:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

There's a difference between defining physical units of measurement and determining the style to be used in the English Wikipedia, particularly for a symbol that doesn't correspond to a unit of measurement. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The International System of Units (SI) is not an authority, it's a system, a particular and generally accepted version of the metric system. BIPM, which is one of the three authorities on the SI, publishes the SI Brochure. As that brochure makes clear in Chapter 5, the percent symbol % is not part of the SI, though it may be used with the SI.[4] Remember, "percent" and % are also used alongside imperial units and US customary units, and simply in general text without being associated with any particular system of units. NebY (talk) 12:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC) Indeed, even authoritative works that strictly implement SI don't use a space before %, as in the Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants (Kaye and Laby) now published by the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) - e.g. [5] and passim. NebY (talk) 14:08, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

This is like when the European Commission decreed that the currency terms "euro" and "cent" would remain "euro" and "cent" in the plural.[6] Hahahahaha.

Besides, the ISU people are French, or at least French is still their official language. French convention also calls for a space in front of colons, question marks, and exclamation points. In English we have our own way of doing things. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:52, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The % symbol does not denote a unit (it's a ratio), thus the ISU has no "authority" to make a rule about it, and the ISU is overstepping the bounds of its competence to even attempt to do so. The ISU's statement is simply an/one opinion, it carries no weight of "authority". In any case English usage is not "legislated" by authority, unlike some other languages (Did someone mention French?) there is no "Universal Commission for English Spelling, Grammar and Orthography". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
Radians are also a ratio, but we space those as if they were a unit. That does not seem a particularly robust argument for or against such usage. --Izno (talk) 13:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

@Izno, I'm afraid you are misconstruing the argument. The argument is not that "non-units are not spaced" it is actually "The ISU has no competence or authority to make rules about non-units". The ISU's authority and competence is actually limited to SI units only. Whatever they say about anything else is merely an opinion. In any case English usage is not "legislated" by authorities, the Anglosphere generally finds the very idea of having a language authority to be rather ridiculous. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I can't believe we're still fucking wasting time on this. This is the most stupid, pointless MOSDATE debate I've seen in years (and that's saying a lot!). Anyone who thinks some little discussion here is going to lead to an edict that five million articles be converted from 5% to 5 % is crazy. EEng (talk) 15:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
Parkinson's law of triviality applies?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:26, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Insisting on a space means either we risk a line break between them or are forcing users to use the hideously ugly and complicated (to non techies) code like 5 %. No upside and some nasty downsides. Or we could just use no space and life is simple for everyone. Stepho talk 00:14, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with others that there should not be a space before "%". The Guardian and Observer style guide is an example of a British style guide which does not use a space, see the section "percentage rises" for several examples. If you prefer American spelling, The Chicago Manual of Style Online also has no space. --Mirokado (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Agree with SMcCandlish, EEng et al. Tony (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
It appears that over 85% of the commenters want no space before %. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:19, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Wording

The MOS-page now says: "Certain unit names (e.g. °C) need never be written in full".

I think the word 'names' is used confusing or maybe even wrong. The example "°C" is a unit symbol not a unit name. -DePiep (talk) 11:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree, and have tried to fix it. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:58, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Certain units need never be written in full (e.g. °C for all uses‍—‌never degrees Celsius) unless required stylistically (automatic conversion of degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit).

The word stylistically seems misplaced in a Manual of Style (i.e., "Style does not require [this] unless required by style"). Also, never is too strong when there are exceptions. How about:

Certain units are generally represented by their symbols in prose (e.g. °C rather than degrees Celsius) but their unit names may be used for emphasis or clarity (automatic conversion of degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit).

—sroc 💬 13:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Looks better indeed. Point: better be congruent: write either "unit symbol, unit name" or "name, symbol".

My main eyecatcher in all this is that units have a name and a symbol, but nothing else (esp. not 'abbreviation'). -DePiep (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Concur generally "so far", including with DePiep's congruency comment. "Usually" would be better than "generally". I think, however, that we're missing the real distinction here; we want unit symbols to usually used with actual measurements, and to be spelled out when used in a words-as-words manner. However, they're also often spelled out when unfamiliar to most readers or when awkward, especially when not in parentheses as conversions. It's not nice to force the omega symbol on people for ohms, nor to write something "Standing 14 in tall" because this usage of "in" as a symbol, while standard in technical writing, is confusing and unfamiliar to almost everyone else (we do have a long-standing consensus not to allow "in.", because it will lead to "ft." and "cm."), but last I looked there was also a consensus to write "17 inch" unless it's a parenthetical conversion where it won't be mistaken for a preposition. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 21:19, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, consensus is to spell unit names out in full on the first occurrence anyway. Even if the symbols were being used, your example would be rendered as "standing 17 in (43 cm) tall" or similar, and this context makes it quite obvious what is meant. Archon 2488 (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I've made a bold edit -- please take a look [7] -- thought I couldn't think of an actual example where in might be mistaken for a preposition. E Eng 01:10, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Metre or meter in scientific articles?

Does Dr John Howard have an active account on this Wikipedia? BushelCandle (talk) 23:54, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's hope not. But official pronouncements aside, American readers expect meter for the unit of length, and perceive metre as a Briticism (as does, BTW, my spellchecker as I type this). E Eng 00:32, 31 January 2016 (UTC) Keep up the good work!

Since they have successfully resisted the introduction of metres and kilograms in their daily life in the US, do they not just regard "metres" as foreign words anyway and have no real problem encountering the more usual spelling? The US army overseas often spells it as metres and kilometres (mind you, that bunch seems to be quite un-American in using the 24h time notation...). Since there isn't a US equivalent of the académie française, how do you determine that theatre and metre are wrong and theater and meter are right in scientific articles ? BushelCandle (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB] In case you haven't heard, Donald Trump makes all these decisions now, and he says meter is the best, the smartest, the classiest unit of measure ever, while metre is for ignorant loafing Muslim commie illegal immigrant criminal terrorists. E Eng 02:51, 31 January 2016 (UTC) Seriously, American usage is kind of like Wikipedia, actually‍—‌no official hierarchy or central authority, but a de facto consensus of respected writers. A quick sample shows that NYT, for example, uses meter.

If meter was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us. Dicklyon (talk) 02:53, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Nonsense. Everyone knows Jesus was partial to feet. E Eng 03:04, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Meter has more meanings than metre, so there's less potential for confusion with the latter. In the English-speaking world, metre is more common. As the Frogs came up with the whole system, their spelling has more resonance. Same deal with liter, I guess which always looks to these eyes like some way of describing low-taste food. Lite, liter, litest. --Pete (talk) 09:25, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Fabulous article, BTW. Written in extraordinary detail by a fair dinkum word nerd. --Pete (talk) 09:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

The spelling is "meter" in American English, and "metre" in International English (i.e. the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and almost everywhere outside the US.) The choice for the latter countries was determined by the need to prevent ambiguity between "meter" the measurement device, and "metre" the unit of measure (similar to the spellings for "to", "too", and "two" and "for", "fore", and "four"). International English is gradually becoming the lingua franca of the entire world (e.g. every school child in China is now learning English from the age of 3) so... if you're not American, maybe you should use "metre".RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:43, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Imperial units...decimals or fractions?

Do folks have some sort of consensus for preference for imperial units here? I used fractions on Telopea truncata but decimals on Banksia aculeata. At least one person prefers fractions and I do think it looks sorta quainter....I have no strong preference myself.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it depends on the topic of the article. Cooks and carpenters usually use fractions, while land surveyors and machinists usually use decimals. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Imperial units are meant to be used with fractions, as that's how the system was devised. Decimals are not unacceptable, but they are not traditional, and they make the imperial system make less sense than it otherwise would do. When I work with imperial units on Wikipedia, and elsewhere, I use fractions. The convert template has fraction support, which is very useful. If you look at MOS:FRAC, you'll notice that it says either form is acceptable. RGloucester — ☎ 22:54, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if they were "meant" to be used with fractions, since fractions in any form we would recognize didn't exist when yards and furlongs and quarts came into use. But Jc3s5h is correct re cooks & carpenters, surveyors & machinists. Like RG said, MOS:FRAC is clear that either is acceptable. I will say that the forms seen in Telopea truncata e.g. 0.5–2.2 cm (1⁄4–7⁄8 in) look weird. In a scientific context, where the primary value (presumably that seen in a source) is decimal, the converted value should be as well: 0.5–2.2 cm (0.20–0.87 in) In the reverse situation, though, there's no getting around the mixing: 13+1⁄4 pounds (6.0 kg). E Eng 00:04, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

What I meant is that the imperial system is not based on powers of ten, and hence is inherently undecimal in nature. RGloucester — ☎ 00:49, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

In that sense, yes. Thus 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 2 quarts to a [something], 2 [somethings] to a gallon... E Eng 01:04, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Britons tend not use cups and quarts, preferring to stick with pints and fluid ounces. For example, I know Americans buy gallon jugs of milk, but Britons usually buy four pint jugs. We formerly used gallons for petrol... RGloucester — ☎ 01:09, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Concur that it's context-sensitive. I have a 2.25 inch hard drive, but fastened it with 1⁄4 inch bolts. It can even be contextually dependent in the same field; I shoot pool with a 19.5 ounce cue, and use a 21⁄4 inch ball set (and that's are how you'll find these products listed in the same catalogs or e-stores). I prefer to use the decimal version when there's not contextual preference, since it's easier to work with editorially and easier to read (and has other benefits like mathematical operability, table sorting, etc.). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:35, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Seasons in citation dates

A number of periodicals date their issues with the names of seasons instead of months. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Seasons says: "For guidelines regarding publication dates in citations, refer to Wikipedia:Citing sources § Dates and reprints of older publications." Can we add a similar statement to MOS:SEASON so that it is clear here that should not be changing how a publisher dates its publications when we cite those periodicals? Imzadi 1979 → 09:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

This strikes me as unnecessary. Has this actually come up as a problem? E Eng 14:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It has come up repeatedly. The latest example is at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Cite magazine with combined season date. My personal opinion is that the statement I introduced in WP:MOS is too weak; we should have a prominent statement in both this guidleline and WP:MOS that these guidelines have nothing whatever to do with citations and citations are only governed by WP:CITE†, but when I suggested that in the past I couldn't get consensus.

† The exception would be if a citation guide specifically adopts the date formats from this guideline as its own, as do the Wikipedia citation templates. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

A statement which probably properly shouldn't have consensus. CS1 and CS2 both take a cue from MOS in several aspects in styling of certain information; this is at-least desirable from having the citations look similar to content in the MOS-proper. Were we to make a statement that where conflicting MOS should defer to CITE, I think there should be a belt-and-suspenders statement in CITE (presumably at CITESTYLE) which states that where CITESTYLE is silent, MOS is king. IMO CITESTYLE really shouldn't say anything above and beyond "here are a list of styles", which it already does. --Izno (talk) 15:38, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

For better or worse, CITESTYLE really does not say "here are a list of styles". It says an article can use any consistent style, even if no other publication on the face of the earth ever used that style. I would prefer CITESTYLE to say use any style used in some recognized source, such as a general-purpose style like the Chicago Manual, or a journal on the same topic as the article, like the International Astronomical Union's style guide, but there is no consensus for that. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:22, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

There definitely should be, with the default to use our own CS1 or CS2, and not use an external one without good reason. I'm skeptical that consensus cannot be shifted at least somewhat in this direction, certainly away from made-up styles, and likely away from contextually inappropriate ones. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:38, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I can't see there ever being some "CITE revolt" against MOS. MOS is intended to cover all content in the article; you don't get a special pass to do stylistically awful things just because you've moved the content into a cite template, a navbox, an infobox, or any other kind of transclusion. WP:CITE is overstepping its scope if it starting to try to compete with WP's style guidelines and act as an separate style guideline. That needs to be merged out and normalized into MOS where it belongs. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The IP who suggested (in the thread Jc3s5h linked) that a citation to Spring-Summer 2015 should be changed to March-August 2015 wasn't using common sense, and everyone else in the discussion saw that immediately. Unless this has come up repeatedly, and there's repeatedly been trouble countering such nonsense, I remain unconvinced that this warrants exacerbating MOSBLOAT. E Eng 16:57, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

See Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 8#Anchors from dates with seasons, including User:Gadget850's statement "I know this has come up before, and I have seen a season used in 'month'." Also Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 10# Wrong capitalization in check for season names, Module talk:Citation/CS1/Date validation#Northern and southern hemispheres, and Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 9#Foreign months and seasons

I'll try to anticipate EEng's next argument, that most of these discussions are about coding templates, not editors trying to introduce sources with seasonal publication dates into articles. My counterargument is that the various guidelines are not just used by editors, but also by programmers writing code to work with Wikipedia. Since these programmers may not have much experience writing scholarly articles, they will benefit from guidelines that are a little more explicit than would be necessary for editors who are experienced writing scholarly articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The cover date of a magazine is only loosely related to the calendar. The actual publication date can be more than a month before the cover date. The issues look fresher on the newsstand. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that kicked off the Personal Computer revolution was published on November 27, 1974. See copyright records. Whatever dating method is used, the printed cover date is needed to track down the correct issue.-- SWTPC6800 (talk)

When this was just about publication dates in citations, I was skeptical. But thinking about it more, there's a broader application, and an easy extension to an existing bullet [8]. E Eng 23:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
The actual failure here is in failing to apply common sense. The labeling of an issue like "Spring-Summer 2015" is a form of title, not a general seasonal reference. If people (not just one gadfly) are actually misunderstanding this, it should be clarified that it doesn't apply to certain things, like quoted material, titles, publication dates, etc. Concur with EEng that it's not just about cover dates; with Swtpc6800 that the actual published cover dates are necessary for sourcing, not the WP:TRUTH of when something hit the newsstands (that would almost always be WP:OR anyway); and with Jc3s5h that this does need to be clarified so it gets coded correctly. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

YYYY–present

I see in the talk archives that there is no agreement whether the year range "YYYY–present", or the expression "Since YYYY", or the template {{As of}} should be used to indicate on ongoing year range, e.g. in succession boxes. It is often acknowledged that many Wikiprojects do use the "YYYY–present" format, though, and some of those have it in their own documentation. Rather than reviving a discussion on the merits on one system over the other, I would like to raise something slightly different, and that is that when the "YYYY–present" is used, some editors use a spaced endash, whilst others (most?) use the unspaced version. It's certainly not clear from the current MOS wording in WP:DATERANGE what to do. Hence my suggestion to clarify what the correct use of this particular range is where Wikiprojects allow, prefer, or encourage its use, whilst stating that there is no global consensus for any of the various ways of expressing an ongoing year range. I'm sure that such a compromise would be a useful addition to the MOS, as it removes an area of style ambiguity.

And by the way, my understanding is that the unspaced version is the correct form for this year range, as there isn't another space already in the range. Schwede 66 00:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely agree unspaced, and we should add this as an example. However, since ranges frequently arise in tables (where horizontal space is at a premium) I suggest we explicitly allow

1985–pres.

in the case of tables (not text), so it will be no wider than "1985 to 1999". EEng (talk) 01:36, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

<ping> E Eng 00:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Not thrilled with the abbreviation "pres.". Definitely unspaced, and no capital P either. I often find myself correcting these mistakes. I have no problem allowing "Since ...". Tony (talk) 05:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Wait, aren't we supposed to avoid statements about "the present", because they are instantly dated? Maybe there's no real use case here anyway. E Eng 06:16, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Year ranges that extend to the present time are commonly used in succession boxes, lists, and the likes. There would be hundreds of use cases occurring in articles that the New Zealand politics task force covers. Schwede 66 18:01, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Good point; I wasn't thinking. So that brings us back to my earlier point. If we follow Tony's advice and disallow 1985–pres., then in a table of officeholders the "Years in office" column would have to be wide enough to accommodate 1985–present, even though all the other values are only as wide as 1981-1985 -- either that, or the "to present" value would have to be coded as 1985–<br/>present to break it into two lines. (I'm a great believer in using horizontal space in tables as efficiently as possible.) Personally I think it'd be ok to allow 1985–pres. E Eng 19:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Open-ended date ranges are an issue in other places as well; for example some online sources suggest referencing them with forms like "2001 onwards" (e.g. here) but, citing this MOS page, the maintainers of the cite/citation templates don't allow open-ended date ranges which throw an error. So be aware that a decision here could have implications elsewhere.

Personally, I think the use of "present" should be avoided; it's spuriously precise. Tony1's "since YYYY" is fine, as is "YYYY onwards"; both are slightly vague about the end date. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Since implies up until the present, so there is no obvious difference.—Bagumba (talk) 20:44, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Facts that can be expected to be updated regularly are an exception to WP:DATED and the use of words such as present. —Bagumba (talk) 20:44, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

If MOS were to explicitly call for "–present", which is very iffy, yes, it would be unspaced, and "present" is never capitalized. Oppose "–pres." If anyone has a table so tight it must be abbreviated, they'll probably just do it, or they'll use XXXX– by itself. MOS does not need to encourage "pres." for any reason, and it's rare enough we need not address it as some kind of problem. If we want to reopen the XXXX– vs. XXXX–present debate, that should be at WT:MOS main talk page, and advertised at the Pump. It's always been contentious, and no answer other than "my wikiproject is gonna do whatever we want and MOS and everyone else can sod off, and so can WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy" is ever gong to come from certain quarters without a rock-solid RfC and close. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion revives...

Should a date range that includes the present be expressed as "1963–present", "1963 – present", or "1963 – Present"? Should such an expression be avoided (e.g., by using "since 1963"?) Looking into the archives, I see that this has been discussed before, but I do not see any guidance in MOS:DATERANGE about it. If multiple ways of expressing such a range are allowable, I think it would be helpful to say that explicitly. As a specific example of the issue, please see this edit (by me). —BarrelProof (talk) 19:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I see no reason to include spaces. There is no difference between "xxxx–xxxx" and "xxxx–present" in my mind. RGloucester — ☎ 20:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not sure guidance is required in the rule (maybe it is). I'd be careful about using "present" and I don't do it myself, I use "1963–2016" instead. The problem with "1963–present" is that it's out of date as soon as you hit the ENTER key, the danger is that you forget about it and nobody notices it and all of a sudden it's 2021 and the situation described under "1963–present" became no longer true in 2018... (There is {{Asof}} and other templates such as {{Update after}} which can help with this I guess, providing enough people patrol these, which I kind of doubt.) Herostratus (talk) 20:31, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Herostratus, may I point out the obvious, and that is that as soon as 2017 arrives, your entry has become outdated? Schwede 66 20:35, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Even before 2017 arrives, if a specific year is identified as the end of the range, the reader may get the impression they are being told the described period of time has ended. Look at the opening sentence of the David Cameron article. It has three uses of "since", and all of those would seem rather strange if converted to "20xx–2016". We also cannot escape the need to use "is" or "has been" for periods that include the present and "was" for periods that do not – which is another aspect that must be updated when something happens. Also, the need to repeatedly update the end year seems rather strange – especially when the described status seems highly unlikely to change. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:08, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

There are a lot of good points made about the usage of "Since YYYY", but they are really only valid in prose. In a table, where there are lots of year ranges, "YYYY-present" for the latest period will have to be more logical than any construction with "since". Schwede 66 04:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

As seen in my post below (the one with the little example table) I think the apparent disagreement re present/pres. vs. since is really just that some editors are thinking more of prose, and others are thinking more of tables. I thought about adding something saying that present/pres. is only for tables/infoboxes, but it comes out awkward and overworried, and I couldn't convince myself that there are no cases in which they might be used in prose. Thus I'm inclined to leave this to editor's good sense. E Eng 05:22, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

It's better to avoid it (which can always be done except where table sorting is an issue, and there's even a way around that). If "–present" is used, it's unspaced, and uncapitalized. The templated solutions are useful because they categorize and tell WP were updates are needed. "Since" is useful sometimes, sometimes not (and it can be coded with the {{As of}} template, which has a lot of options now. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposal

Under the heading Ranges, there is a subheading Notes with three bullet points. I propose that we add a fourth bullet point as follows:

A range may extend to the present time, but there is no consensus to the use of the term "present"; some editors argue that the the expression "Since YYYY" should be used instead. Where the use of "present" is preferred, an unspaced endash is to be used. Where year ranges are used in narrow table columns, the use of "YYYY–pres." is acceptable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Schwede66 (talk • contribs)

I would prefer something like this:

If the start of a range is determined, but the end is undetermined because the subject is ongoing, the form YYYY–present may be used. An unspaced endash is used in this case. Do not use a hyphen (YYYY-present), spaces (YYYY – present), or a capital "p" (YYYY–Present).

I don't think we should comment in the MoS about when or whether or not this format should be used, merely on how to style it. RGloucester — ☎ 21:10, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

How about saying this:

In cases where the date range starts with an identified year and includes the present time, the period of time may be expressed as "since YYYY" or "YYYY–present". Do not use a hyphen (YYYY-present), spaces (YYYY – present), or a capital "p" (YYYY–Present). Where year ranges are used in narrow table columns, the use of "YYYY–pres." is acceptable.

—BarrelProof (talk) 21:33, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

That's fine, though I don't know how keen I am on "pres." I shan't object to its use, however. RGloucester — ☎ 21:56, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Several of us do, however. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I've tinkered with BarrelProof's edit a bit [9] to generalize it:

Constructions such as 1982–present (unspaced ndash), and January 1, 2011 – present or January 2011 – present (spaced ndash), may be used where appropriate (see #Statements likely to become outdated and WP:RELTIME). In tables, infoboxes, and so on, pres. may be used (1982–pres.) to conserve horizontal space.

Pinging Tony1 since he too had some hesitation about pres., but I'm hoping he will join RG in shan't objecting to it as well, at least the way I've phras'd it, my liege. E Eng 22:16, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Never use "present" in this context, I'd oppose any style recommendation that even suggests "present" or "Present" in this context would be acceptable. Find another way to express it but never using the word "present". --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
- I prefer Barrel's. But just one point: "Since YYYY" is the same length as is YYYY–pres., but doesn't involve a dash and a dotted abbreviation. As a copy-editor I would always correct it to the former, which is easier to read and recognise. But that doesn't reduce my pref. for Barel's proposed wording over RG's, which doesn't even mention "since". In both proposals, "a capital" could be just "capital". Tony (talk) 23:11, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Tony, if what you're saying is that "Under the leadership of Williams (chairman 2010–present)..." would be better as "Under the leadership of Williams (chairman since 2010)...", I agree -- even though "Under the leadership of Jones (chairman 2005–2010)..." is OK. But would you really object to this table?

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Smith	2001–2005
Jones	2005–2010
Williams	2010–pres.

One not-minor consideration is that the format above will sort properly. E Eng 01:41, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I really hate "pres." too (and it's not entirely obvious as to what it means for non-native speakers of English like myself) but I'm wracking my brains to think of a clearer, less ugly, short alternative for use in tables, etc and coming up with zilch other than the spuriously precise "today"... BushelCandle (talk) 04:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

How about "2010–now"? Just kidding. E Eng 05:22, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

You won't believe this, but while I was airborne I reached the same conclusion; "now" is less prone to baffle folks on first encounter, shorter, less ugly but still has the same problems with sorting properly and a spurious air of exactitude. However, were it to gain traction, then presumably it would be a relatively trivial task to tweak the sorting routine? BushelCandle (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Um, perhaps you missed my little Just kidding -- now is too colloquial, I think.

Not sure what you're saying about sorting. If everything's of the form YYYY-[something] (where [something] is maybe YYYY or maybe pres. or maybe now, but in fact can be anything) AND no two entries have the same YYYY on the left side, then the entries sort correctly even if treated as just text -- no change to sort routine needed (because no sort routine is needed). E Eng 09:18, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

In tables or other ‘short form‘ usage, what’s wrong with just a dash, “2010–”? Elsewhere I certainly agree with the above about avoiding “present”, be it with “since” or something more specific, “appointed”, “elected”, “acceded”, “born”, &c., according to context.—Odysseus 1479 06:13, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

You see "2010– " on the last entry on tablets on buildings e.g. "Pastors of the First Church", so that when the present pastor retires, you just add the missing year. But in writing I think it looks at first like something's been accidentally omitted. E Eng 07:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I definitely object to "pres." It's sloppy, barely recognizable, and a made-up style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

To me it seems that the use of constructions like "YYYY–present" and "Month DD, YYYY – present" is a very widespread phenomenon on Wikipedia. I doubt we can get a consensus to prohibit that (and I don't personally see anything too wrong with it). The best we can do is acknowledge that it exists and try to give it a consistent formatting (i.e., not "YYYY–Present" or "YYYY – present" or "YYYY – Present"). —BarrelProof (talk) 06:36, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Not valid policy reasoning. Virtually every policy and guideline we have is frequently violated, but that does not invalidate them. Most of the rules we have in all of these documents were put into place to put an end to one very-not-best practice or another. WP:CCC and all that. While it is true that the purpose of WP:POLICY pages is to codify best practices identified by the community, not make up and impose fake ones out of thin air, this in no way implies that every common practice is a best one that must be enshrined as officially permissible. This entire notion has a key fallacy: It is the very lack of us having a consistent rule on this that is the cause of the widespread lack of consistency. If MEDRS were deleted, people would start citing fringe sources in medical articles. This would not necessitate that WP draft a new MEDRS that codified this as legitimate; it would lead to the clarification of guidelines and policies (e.g. a medicine section at WP:RS) that this was not actually permissible. When some random sphere of chaos exists, the chaos is a lack of policy, not a new policy we must create protecting the chaos. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this position. There is no need for the MoS to proscribe a widely used way of expressing date ranges on Wikipedia at this moment. I agree that it should not be used in prose, but it is often times the best solution in tables, lists, article titles, section headers, and so on. All we can do is ensure that it is styled correctly, which is what the proposed guidance does. Editorial consensus on talk pages can determine whether or not a specific instance of its use is appropriate. RGloucester — ☎ 14:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

See above. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Still oppose anything of the kind, and the complacency that goes with it. The reasons why expressions of this kind can not be used are obvious (sorry if you're insensitive to them), I think these reasons start with WP:V. "Present" in Wikipedia's voice can't be referenced to a reliable source. "Present", "currently", "now", etc can only be referenced to reliable sources that most obviously would have a publication date, so it can only be used with an in-text attribution that makes clear when the reliable source said it.

FYI, this sorts as well:

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Name	start	end
Smith	2001	2005
Jones	2005	2010
Williams	2010

Also just saw that the proposals above would be incompatible with WP:EPHEMERAL which is another section of this same guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:17, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Your statement that present-type statements need in-text attribution is nonsense. President of the United States and Barack Obama (the latter an FA, BTW) say "On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th and current president" and "Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician currently serving as the 44th President of the United States"‍—‌without in-text attribution‍—‌and that's perfectly OK for obvious reasons. (Sorry if you're insensitive to those reasons, and you probably should cut the high-handed faux regret. If you were the master stylist you seem to imagine yourself to be, you wouldn't use comma splices and independent parenthetical suspensions, and write "the reasons why", and certainly not all those in one "sentence".)

Anyway your arguments against "2010–present"‍—‌were they valid‍—‌are just as valid against "2010– ", because they have exactly the same semantics. So why are you using them to (apparently, from your table) argue for the latter over the former?

FYI, your table has nothing to do with anything, since

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Smith	2001–2005
Jones	2005–2010
Williams	2010–

sorts correctly too, as does

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Smith	2001–2005
Jones	2005–2010
Williams	2010–pres.

And finally, WP:EPHEMERAL is the same as WP:DATED, which was discussed above already: pages that can be expected to be updated regularly are excepted.

Lest this seem overharsh, I note that I'm the second person in 24 hours [10], and one of many over a longer period, who's needed to warn you about your misplaced confidence in your command of English. The "complacency" would seem to be yours. E Eng 10:08, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

How about something in this vein:

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Smith	2001–2005
Jones	2005–2010
Williams	2010–...^[a]

Notes

^ Started a second 5-year term in 2015

Or:

**Company chairmen**
Name	Term
Smith	2001–2005
Jones	2005–2010
Williams	As of 2010^[update]

(with a data-sort parameter in the last row)

Even for the supposedly "regularly updated" variety this would imho work better: take the last two rows for the table at History of FIFA#List of Presidents of FIFA, currently using "2015–present", wouldn't this be more informative to the reader:

8	Sepp Blatter	Switzerland	1998–2015
–	Issa Hayatou (acting)	Cameroon	2015–...^[a]

Notes

^ See 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress

--Francis Schonken (talk) 10:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

My reaction to the various suggestions above: In tables and parentheticals where the format XXXX–YYYY is used to denote ranges, I've seen XXXX– and I've seen XXXX–present. I don't think I've seen XXXX–pres., XXXX–now, XXXX–..., or since XXXX}}. (The last one makes me think of a restaurant: "Serving everyone's favorite steaks since 1937.")

I don't understand Francis Schonken's arguments against "present", "current", etc. If I write on February 8 that Barack Obama is currently the president of the United States, and thousands of reliable sources published on February 8 refer to Barack Obama as the president of the United States, it's done. Of course, any such reference is a candidate for becoming speedily outdated, but an encyclopedia really can't avoid speaking of the present. The table Francis Schonken offers as an example doesn't help, in my opinion. Leaving an empty box for the end of someone's term is still a statement that currently, in the present, his term hasn't ended. The day after his term ends, it will be untrue that his term has no end date, and no reliable source will support it; but it will remain empty until someone fills it in. I briefly, some years ago, realized the problem posed by "currently", especially with respect to such ephemera as "X is currently filming ...", but stopped worrying about it once I realized that, as a practical matter, there was nothing to be done about. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I've seen most of those bletcherous variants, and many others, like XXXX–?, XXXX–ongoing, etc., etc. It is a real issue. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:50, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

After reading all the above, I'd just add that as so many of our articles aren't kept up-to-date very rigorously, slightly vaguer forms can be safer, such as "from 2010" in prose and yes, "2010–" in tables. "Present" is too definite and "pres." is a jarringly unfamiliar abbreviation and even potentially confusing, e.g. in a list of vice-presidents. I'm not sure deprecating "-present" and "-pres." would be effective, even if we found consensus here, but I'd rather we didn't actually recommend them. NebY (talk) 17:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Yep. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:50, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Vehemently oppose XXXX–...; that's a made-up style you won't find in any reliable source on English. Demanding that here would be precisely the kind of "MoS inventing bullshit out of thin air" that people frequently but falsely accuse it of. No way we're going to make it true for them.
But violently agree that Francis's summary of the problems with "present" is correct (as far as it goes; there are others). Just the fact that lots of people do it doesn't make it a good idea. We do need a) advice against it, and b) advice what to do instead. It does not matter one whit that some people will ignore it. In 6 months, fewer of them will. In two years, hardly anyone will. When's the last time you saw someone link something like 3 January 2012? (Probably it was some time around that date.) Or capitalize a species common name? Or change a bunch of metric stuff to read "3MM" and "345G"? All changes MoS introduces take time to propagate, and most of them meet pockets of resistance, as do all WP:POLICY changes of almost every kind. Nothing new or different about this. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

What sections mean

@EEng:Style manuals are broken into sections, each of them providing style guidelines for the respective section's topic. A section on geographical names discusses geographical names—and not names of living people. A section on dates covers dates—and not the formatting of chemical formulas or the pluralization of foreign words. Here, we have a section on decimals, which contains guidelines on presenting decimals. It doesn't matter that the language you added about handling whole numbers and fractions is true. It isn't relevant to that section. There are other sections for those topics. But we do need a decimals section because, as you can see, there are guidelines specific to decimals. A person reading that section expects to learn about the handling of decimals, and a person wanting to know how decimals are handled needs to have a section like this. One of those guidelines is about the use of singular or plural with decimals. A person who wants to know "Do I use the singular or plural with fractions?" isn't going to be looking here, he's going to be looking at the section on fractions. This seems really straightforward to me. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:10, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes. The attempt to change the decimals section into a general guideline about numbers makes no sense at all; the entire document is the general guideline on numbers. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 21:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Singular version with whole number 1?

I just noticed that the WP:DECIMAL section says:

"Nouns following a number expressed as a decimal are plural (averaging 0.7 years)."

It seems to me that this should be amended for when the number is the whole number 1 without any fractional component, as in:

"Nouns following a number expressed as a decimal are plural (averaging 0.7 years). The exception would be for the whole number 1, in which case the singular is acceptable (lasting 1 hour)"

I was going to be WP:BOLD, because I've been copyediting to reflect this exception, but thought I'd better bring it here first. Slambo (Speak) 12:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

"Expressed as a decimal" means "with a decimal point and digits to the right of it". This is what WP:DECIMAL addresses. The number 1, written as a whole number in your own example, isn't "a number expressed as a decimal", and is outside the scope of that rule, as are 3, 42, 0, -5, 6½,

π

, etc. —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I've made a bold edit [11] which I hope is on target:

Nouns following any number other than 1 (unsigned) are plural (increased 0.7 percentage points, π radians, 365.25 days, final balance zero dollars, increased by 1 vote but net change +1 votes or net change of −1 votes).

I'm certainly open to discussion on the +1 and -1 cases. E Eng 00:11, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I think your series of recent edits means that the style guide prose is now correct as it appears on the page. (The only tiny quibble I would have is that, strictly speaking, it is unnecessary to have a non breaking space between an amount and "dollars" or "days" - a normal space is also acceptable.) BushelCandle (talk) 14:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The  s aren't there as part of the code being specified/recommended for actual use; they're just there to prevent certain unintended line-wraps in the presentation of these examples here in MOS, since MOS is hard enough to understand as it is. In this case, I wanted to be sure that the decimal-other-than-unsigned-1 (or in one case, decimal-which-is-unsigned-1) always is immediately adjacent to the singular or plural noun, so that the lesson of the example can't be lost. E Eng 03:23, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Excellent point! (Perhaps replace non-breaking spaces with the template Nowrap then ?) BushelCandle (talk) 03:54, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

BushelCandle, it's unnecessary to say how excellent my points are; everyone here at MOSNUM knows that. Where the entire example is short, I often put {nobr} around it, but if it's at least moderately long that creates too many bad breaks -- not worth the uglification. E Eng 01:16, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

That's self-evidently counterfactual. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, remember when I suggested you lighten up a bit? [12] E Eng 00:08, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

See jest below! — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:28, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

The section WP:DECIMAL is, explicitly, about numbers with digits following a decimal point. Within that context, there is no need to, and it doesn't make sense to, phrase things as though the scope of the section were all numbers, any more than we would insert guidelines for the handling of geographical names in a section titled "Names of people". For that reason, I'm changing it back. —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:39, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Problem solved [13]. E Eng 03:34, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but it isn't solved. There needs to be a section on handling decimals, and the first, second, and fourth bullets are still, specifically, about decimals. Changing the title of the section to give the impression that the section is about any base 10 number, when three of the four bullets are specifically about how to handle numbers with decimal points in them, doesn't clarify anything. You're basically trying to make the whole section revolve around a generalization you want the third bullet point to cover. I'm changing it back again so that the section can serve its intended purpose. —Largo Plazo (talk) 10:31, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Concur with Lagoplazo; this entire attempt to change this section has been unhelpful, and is predicated on a single editor's misunderstanding of it, which he persists in even after it's been explained to him multiple times. Revert to status quo ante. Then let's see if he proposes something cogent, after identifying an actual problem. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:31, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

That's self-evidently counterfactual. An editor pointed out a hole in the guidelines easily fixed; I fixed it; one editor explicitly endorsed it, as did (implicitly) the hundreds of watchers here; then two weeks later one editor shows up complaining, not about the content, but that somehow the purity of some section heading was being violated ("I'm changing it back again so that the section can serve its intended purpose"). That's not "explained... multiple times"; it's "sectioning tail wags the content dog".

I've created a separate singular-plural section so that now, perhaps, we can focus on whether the advice given is what we want. I'm still a bit unsure re net change -1 points/net change +1 points and net change negative one points/net change positive one points (plural) -- help! E Eng 00:08, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

At least two editors are now disputing the change, that's sufficient to not insert it again without a clear consensus. As the second relevant thread below covers in detail, the page is in sections for a reason, and undoing that here to confuse the clearly specific section on decimal usage with a general section on the formatting of all numbers when the document as a whole is that topic, devided into subtopics, is completely counterproductive. Let's try restarting: Please identify specifically what you think the problems are and how you would fix them. PS: Don't nab my stock phrases, or I will gnaw at your ankles and make terrier noises, and maybe shed on you. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:43, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Referring to past events (e.g. sport victories) with "the years are..."

At University of Oklahoma a tiny dispute has broken out about:

The men's gymnastics team has won nine national championships, the most out of all sports at the University of Oklahoma; the years they won are 1977, 1978, 1991, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2015.

vs.

The men's gymnastics team has won nine national championships, the most out of all sports at the University of Oklahoma; the years they won were 1977, 1978, 1991, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2015.

(emphasis added, and the "has won" is arguably redundant, and could probably just be "won")

View 1 seems to be that the victories did not go away, so present tense must be used. View 2 is that these are references to the past, so past tense is used.

Uninvolved opinions?

PS: Obviously this could be rephrased to "The men's gymnastics team [has?] won nine national championships (1977, 1978, 1991, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2015), the most out of all sports at the University of Oklahoma", but the question is likely to come up more than once (maybe already has). In the sports editing I do (and read) it's always past tense for this sort of thing, but I don't spend any time editing US collegiate sports (I was just there doing table cleanup), so there may be come kind of "convention" I'm unaware of.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:12, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I would say the trophies belong to / come from those years, in the present, but the wins themselves were in the past. Those who want to use the present tense should rephrase, something like “… team holds nine championships, …, for the years 1977, ….” But of the two choices above I think the first is incorrect; semantics doesn’t trump syntax.—Odysseus 1479 04:36, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I've got to go with the first example. They both sound/read naturally to me but I keep coming back to the fact that those are the years that they won. Even if the second example passes muster grammatically, there is still some potential for ambiguity (ie, has something changed between now and then?). If this were at the article talk page I would agree that it's a pretty easy rewrite, but since this is an MOS discussion I'll cast my lot with the first example. Also, FWIW, if I were to formally state my birth year I would certainly write that "my birth year is 19xyz".Primergrey (talk) 05:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Our idiolects clearly differ, then: I would certainly say that the year of my birth was 19— (although my birthday is Whatember the Nth). I would only use the present tense for a concrete instance, e.g. “My year of birth is on the application form.“—Odysseus 1479 06:12, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Really, is there's no end to the pretension here at Talk:MOS etc? By definition the idiolects of any two people differ; that's what makes them idiolects. Can we just stick to normal vocabulary, please? E Eng 21:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Parallel construction: "The band only played three of 14 scheduled tour dates in 2015, due to the guitarist's injury; the dates are 14 February, 28 February, and 6 March." Still think it sounds right, Primergrey? I have to say it does not. We would only use that construction when referring to dates as abstract strings of data: "The dates that caused the code to break are 'February 29, 2016' and 'February 29, 2012', because the leap year array only extended to 2008." When you say "my birth year is 19yy, and my place of birth is Los Angeles, California" you are providing string values for data parameters (for a form, a vehicle registration database, phone authentication with your bank, or the like); it is not natural language, which would be "I was born in Los Angeles in 19yy". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:58, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Still reads as technically correct to me, but since I'd prefer to never see a sentence that hideously awkward again, I will gladly concede. Primergrey (talk) 06:46, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't like it either, but there are probably less awkward constructions that still do the same thing, and I'm dealing with someone who will fight like mad that his "the years are" version is the correct way. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

God, the fucking trivia people argue about. E Eng 08:08, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I know. This was predicated by a reverter accusing me of editwarring and insisting that my grammar was wrong, then pursuing me to my talk page to rave on and on, after I already gave him what he wanted. I eventually hatted the discussion after he starting adding in ag[e]ist insults. There's a danger that this kind of browbeating behavior would be used article after article, against editors who would actually be intimidated by it. I would rather there just be a consensus here that his grammatical punditry is off-base, so it's nipped in the bud, quick-like. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
Just "The men's gymnastics team has won nine national championships, more than any other sports team at the University of Oklahoma, winning in 1977, 1978, 1991, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2015."

We want to write English that communicates clearly without making some of our readers stumble and hesitate because the grammar seems off to them. Sometimes that means recasting a sentence. Oh, and sports don't win championships - teams do that - and no-one wins years. NebY (talk) 11:59, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I already attempted a fix like that, but the other editor got venty about it and has unhelpfully moved the years into a footnote. Anyway, the point of the thread wasn't "are there ways to improve this wording?" (I already gave an example of how to do so in the OP). It was "does MOS accept present tense in such a construction as valid?", because the intensity of the reaction over there suggests it's an construction someone will strongly defend with accusations that anyone who disagrees is "ungrammatical". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:47, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh dear. Well, it might help to see the sentence more clearly if we expand it into something more grammatical: "The years they won..." -> "The years in which they won...". But perhaps more to the point, this year is 2016, last year was 2015 and 2014 was the year before that. However much one might favour the Eternal Present, and leaving aside some abstruse cosmology and time-travel fiction, generally we don't think everything is simultaneously occurring now. We conceive of past and future, we divide time with dates, and when we use English to talk directly of different years, we naturally gravitate to past and future tenses. We may still understand what you mean if you refuse to use them, but we will recoil as if we've glimpsed a horror. NebY (talk) 20:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

MoS page formatting

EEng: I was quite intrigued by the comments you made in your edit summary with this edit.

Part of what you wrote was
(paraphrased to what I assume you might have written were it not for the stingy number of characters you can use in edit summaries)
:
a) This format (inserting linebreaks) is inconsistent with MOS in general;

Is there a page (or pages) you can point me to that will educate me about this?

I think you know the problem I was trying to circumvent. To use text and markup that was consistent with our own advice in MoS (about not needing to use a non-breaking space between an amount and its unit when written out in full - as opposed to before the symbol for the unit) without having the example accidentally wrap in an inconvenient position. BushelCandle (talk) 06:08, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and there is no central list of rules that dictate all procedures. MOS itself is a guideline that generally should be followed, but there are good reasons for using nbsp in some short examples so they are clear regardless of where line breaks strike. The fact that MOS does not always eat its own dogfood is something for us to wryly joke about, not a cause for great angst or month-long debates. A few non-breaking spaces solve the confusion problem without forcing line breaks that are definitely undesirable. Johnuniq (talk) 07:02, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

My difficulty is that I genuinely don't understand why using a break template is undesirable. I genuinely feel that it is better to separate examples of guidance in action on a different line from the guidance itself. (The fact that layout also has the serendipitous effect of obviating breaking our own advice with regard to unit words and non breaking spaces, is a bonus). That's why I still don't understand the rationale behind either the referenced edit itself or the summary explaining it. I've read the essay Wikipedia:Don't use line breaks and, since I can not see how this essay applies to this revert, I'm wondering what advice/policy/rationale that I'm ignorant of. I'm not quibbling or wikilawyering - just trying to fix my own ignorance. BushelCandle (talk) 07:30, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps you've seen my little fantasy about the specter of a MOS-MOS here [14]
There's nothing wrong with {{break}} per se, nor with using it (or, I guess, <br/>, depending on how many html-purists are abroad) where it helps
Generally in MOS, examples are run into the explanatory text, but sometimes they're set off in bulletlists. Usually a single isolated example is run in, a long series of examples is bulleted, and two or three examples might go either way. Note the usually -- looking now I see several single which are bulleted, and groups of 4+ examples run in. It's mostly just judgment. Considerations I've used include: length of each example or total length of the group; whether a given good example is grouped with a contrasting "bad", with another "good" to which is has special affinity, or with markup or explanatory comment; surrounding sentence structure making either run-in or list awkward; whether bulleting helps highlight parallels among examples; whether individual examples themselves are multiline; and maybe other things I'm not thinking of since I just swapped out a leaky water heater and I'm not at my best just now, though I'm not sure I'm ever at my best anymore, not the way I used to be, I mean I can remember when I could wait where was I? Oh yes.
Certainly just adding {{break}} as you did -- neither running in nor bulleting, nor even indenting -- is unlike anything anywhere else on the page. In the case of the four combinations of {kg,kilogram}X{say unit once, say unit twice} -- I don't think the concept being illustrated is hard enough to justify bulleting the examples; but I did make them individually nonbreakable just now, since I think that unobtrusively makes it easier to parse the four cases. And elsewhere I took out the particular nbsps that prompted your experiment in the first place (i.e. using {{break}} instead) -- I'm the one who, years ago, sprinkled nbsps and {{nowrap}}s here and there to keep short examples, or the key pieces of them, from breaking, but looking at these particular ones I think I was overdoing it.

Always happy to discuss, of course. E Eng 13:11, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a lot of time and care out of your busy hydraulic schedule to try and explain things, EEng - it's very much appreciated and I have a suspicion that others will benefit from your exposition too. (I did particularly enjoy the juicy language at A rolling stone gathers no MOS - your fluidity is wasted at this dry-as-dust project but might be very welcome at our sister project Wikivoyage)

I do agree that the whole MoS should ideally format examples of guidance working in action in the same way. Although I do still think my way of doing things with line breaks, when coupled with the green and red markup is adequately clear and actually preferable from the point of view of sending better semantic signals to search engines and when using screen readers, I'm certainly not going to re-write our whole MoS to be consistent with my simplistic ideas, so your reversion is now thoroughly consensual... BushelCandle (talk) 03:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

In case you're wondering, the water heater replacement is going swimmingly. E Eng 04:49, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Reconciling "Centuries and millennia" with "Numbers as figures or words"

The MOS provides,

Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words
Integers greater than nine expressible in one or two words may be expressed either in numerals or in words (16 or sixteen, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred).

Previously, however, the section of the MOS concerning centuries and millennia used numerals for centuries and words for millennia. I have revised that section to conform to the guidelines concerning numbers as figures or words.

This issue was discussed some years ago, without any decision or consensus to alter the rule. Yet many, many references to centuries on Wikipedia, including titles of articles, violate the rule, and corrections have been aggressively reverted. The section of the MOS on centuries and millennia was formerly a source of confusion, because it also violated the rule. I have revised it in hopes of eliminating that confusion. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 21:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Have you considered the fact that maybe this is a 'rule' that is just idiotic not not worth enforcing? InsertClever Phrase Here 19:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't consider that to be a "fact". Similarly idiotic rules are enforced by users of the Chicago Manual of Style and AP Stylebook, the BBC, the AMA, the Library of Congress, the Guardian and Observer, and the APA and MLA, to name but a few. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 20:36, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

You've confused Cardinal numbers (linguistics) with Ordinal numbers (linguistics). (Not to seem like I'm berating you at this point, but since you've made this same argument all over the place, I'm responding where I find it.) -- Kendrick7^talk 01:04, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

In this case, that's a distinction without a difference. All academic style manuals treat ordinals and cardinals the same for this purpose (except for those that require all century numbers to be written in words). See the sources I've cited here. @Kendrick7: should undo his or her reversion of my edits. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:46, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I shall not. You are being pedantic; it would take 20 man-years to clean up the mess you intend to create. There's more to life than that. We do need pedants on the project, but set your project goals higher than quibbling about this sort of thing. (Which should, really, be the WP:MOS motto.) -- Kendrick7^talk 02:20, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh spare me! J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 14:13, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Centralizing discussion on normalizing DATEVAR, etc. with ENGVAR

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see centralized discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Cleaning up and normalizing MOS:ENGVAR, WP:DATEVAR, WP:CITEVAR, etc.. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:CREEP

Disclaimers

The project page should be deleted per WP:CREEP.
The project page keeps nit-pickers busy outside of the article namespace, this is a desirable side-effect.
Ignore all rules.

Ob on topic: Non-base-10 notations is bogus, there are other conventions depending on the context, e.g., u+1234 for the Unicode BMP, u+123456 for other Unicode planes, 12h for hex or 12b for binary in some assemblers or FWIW enwiki articles such as INT 13h. –Be..anyone 💩 07:35, 17 April 2016 (UTC); PoC, the 💩 in my signature is 💩 for u+01F4A9. –Be..anyone 💩 07:43, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Fractions

Can someone please tell me why "Do not use special characters such as '½'" is still the rule in 2016? Are there really any browser/OS combinations still in use that can't support this very common character?—Chowbok ☠ 02:59, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Just a guess, but I think the restriction has to do with the fact that using it would make that one fraction render with a quite different appearance from other fractions in the article e.g. 5⁄7. I actually think that in, say, a table of particle spins, it might be OK to use the character. E Eng 03:23, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I think WP:NOSYMBOLS is also an issue whereby someone with a screen reader might get a question mark instead of the symbol for some fractions. In addition, some would find reading 7+1⁄2 easier than 7½, and the latter might be a little ugly, and 7¼ is more of a problem whereas 7+1⁄4 is clear. Johnuniq (talk) 04:55, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
There’s also ease of editing, as although I can easily type accents (café), many non-ascii chars such as '•' and Chinese chars such as '中', I have no idea how to type ½ and other fractional characters without looking them up or using copy and paste. And consistency, not just with our existing practices but with the characters themselves which can vary even between each other on a user’s computer, with characters such as ½ and ⅑ appearing in different Unicode revisions, different places in the Unicode table, so are often displayed with different fonts and appearances.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:03, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Year ranges

Why are we using an abbreviated end year in a range of years in article titles? ie: WWII (1939-45), instead of writing out the second year in full? ie: WWII (1939-1945) The guideline calls for all years preceding 1000AD to be written in full, including years in BC, and also years that switch centuries ie: 1769-1821. But otherwise this abbreviation is permitted (and occurring). Wouldn't using full years not only look better, but be more encyclopaedic? I've noticed other discrepancies as well, such as brackets; some article titles have them surrounding the years, some don't. I've also noticed some articles where the year-range precedes the title. So I also think some standardization is called for. I would like some opinions on this. Thanks - ^theWOLFchild 04:09, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

This abbreviation of years was/is recommended by at one style guide of which I'm aware (MLA). Not sure if more recent editions change that practice or what other guides say. --Izno (talk) 11:17, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

It is customary, when writing a span of years within the same century, to drop all but the last two digits of the second year (at least where the years take four or more digits). Compare the usage with regard to page-ranges (e.g., "pp. 422-35"). There's nothing wrong per se with writing the second year in full, but I don't know of any reason to say that it's more encyclopedic. On the other hand, consistency is encyclopedic. If editors showed a strong preference for writing the second number in full, I'd say we should follow it, but I don't think that's the case. As for brackets (assuming we're talking about what we Americans oddly call "parentheses"), there is an established convention—Joe Bloggs (1783-1852); Syro-Austrian War (360-356 BCE); Bert of Cappadocia (floruit ca. AD 970)—and we should stick with it, and impose it where it hasn't been followed. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:16, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure, "parenthesis"... I noticed that some articles with year ranges in the title didn't have them. I agree, there should be consistency. Anyway, when I say that "1939-45" doesn't look "encyclopaedic", I mean it looks less formal than one might expect from an encyclopaedia. I think is even looks somewhat rough, or lazy. Basically, it doesn't look right. And when it comes to consistency, why do we abbreviate only the years after 1000AD? Basically the last thousand years are abbreviated (with some exceptions), but up 5000 years before that aren't? I don't see the consistency in that. - ^theWOLFchild 21:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I suspect we abbreviate only years after A. D. 1000 (which should probably read "after A. D. 999", and should probably also apply to years before 999 B. C.) because three-digit years don't get abbreviated; but I haven't looked that up anywhere. I agree that 1928-1987 looks better than 1928-87, and I'd favor a change of convention, but as long as we have a convention of abbreviating dates, we should stick to it. Maybe a case could be made that date-ranges in titles shouldn't be abbreviated. What do the style guides say about that? J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 21:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I think the idea of not abbreviating date ranges in titles (article titles, of course) is brilliant. That's something that would be decided over at WP:AT, but if that happens someone please remember to add it as a note here at DATESANDNUMBERS. E Eng 17:22, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but we actually specifically deprecate doing "pp. 422-35" to page numbers, and it supposed to be given as "pp. 422-435". Doing dates this way would be consistent. I don't think we should be consistent because someone found one style guide somewhere that said to abbreviate the year. This has actually be a minor irritation to me for about a decade editing here (and frankly I tend to just ignore that "rule" as illogical, and write out "2012–2015". The obvious and intractable problem with permitting the abbreviated form is that any time a year ending in 01 through 12 is abbreviated, it becomes nearly indistinguishable for may readers from a year-month date: 2010–12 is very hard, even impossible to tell apart from 2010-12 in many fonts and on many devices. And few editors are going to always remember to only do these abbreviations with -00 or -13+. And it will result in inconsistent treatment of dates in the same article. The smart thing to do is recommend using full years, not abbreviated ones, except in very tight tables. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:16, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Date ranges get before 999 get confusing for the reader. If we had "Second Syro-Austrian War (160-56 BCE)", would it mean from 160 to 156 BCE or 160 to 56 BCE? Sure, our rule about using the full form when going over the century boundary applies, but now the reader needs to know about our MOS. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:31, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

An aside on abbreviation of page ranges

Where is pp. 422-35 deprecated? E Eng 09:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Weirdly, I don't find it in MOS:NUM or WP:CITE any longer, though this has been discussed before, agreed to, and included at some point, since I recall the discussion, probably back around 2008. It's still documented that way at Help:Citation Style 1#Pages, and in the citation template documentation. It's also the style recommended by various external guides, though the shorter form is used in inline citations in some styles (e.g. MLA: "...according to Martin 1995 (127–28)", but not in APA or AMA; it just varies, and some don't care, e.g. IEEE accepts both styles). What MoS should say (again) is to use full numbers in a range, except for page number ranges in specific citation styles that require the shorter form. The reason to prefer this is that it's much easier to be certain at a microsecond glance that the string of numbers is a range and what that range is. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:30, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Honestly, this is headed straight down the CREEPy road. Has there been persistent, recurring dispute on this justifying more MOSbloat? E Eng 08:35, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I thought it was in WP:CITE too. My recollection is that it was for consistency. Books often have page numbers in Roman numerals, and these of course have to be cited in full. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:35, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I'd prefer that we deprecate digital deletion everywhere. It's never helpful. Dicklyon (talk) 01:42, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Deprecate digital deletion, Dicklyon declared decisively! E Eng 04:15, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

It's very helpful to readers. Who wants to read "12453–12455", as you see for some journals that use a silly cumulative system? Tony (talk) 02:31, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

My word, Tony, that is a big book you have there. Or is it just a big idea? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:09, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces between number and unit symbol

The table in Unit names and symbols describes the use of the html code   between numbers and unit symbols as deprecated. However, both the main MOS page and a page specifically about line-breaks explicitly advise using   in this way. Should the other pages be edited to reflect the deprecation of   for this purpose, or should the code be revived? 1RM (talk) 22:43, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

You're confusing a unit name with a unit symbol -- look again. E Eng 00:41, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I see that now. Thank you. 1RM (talk) 02:31, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]This is about the third time in just eight years that a MOS thread has been resolved nonviolently. Shall we notify the media? E Eng 08:40, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]I find your characterization of MOSNUM deeply offensive. Strike your comment immediately or I'll report you to some random Axx noticeboard. You've been warned. WTF? You should know there's no room for civility here. It might force the Earth out of its orbit or something.

Mojoworker (talk) 21:52, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears army boots! E Eng 21:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]Now you're making me mad. I think I'll go slap some flag icons in some infoboxes to calm myself down. Mojoworker (talk) 22:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]If incivility keeps the earth in orbit, then that should take care of things for another 1000 years at least. There should be some kind of Copernican Barnstar for that. E Eng 22:05, 25 April 2016 (UTC) Handy template, that ^[FBDB], no?

^[FBDB]Yes indeed. Cosmic order now fully restored. I think our work here is done. Mojoworker (talk) 22:11, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

And your mother chews gum, ya schmuck. Smear Van Nit (talk) 22:16, 25 April 2016 (UTC) ...whoops, almost forgot to add ^[FBDB]

^[FBDB]Hey, that was really funny, you wanker. E Eng 22:23, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I do hope you're not being sarcastic again, EEng. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB]Not about you being funny. E Eng 02:27, 28 April 2016 (UTC) You forgot the ^[FBDB]. Gotcha! I'm taking you to ANI.^More^[FBDB]

Question: use of ordinals in article titles

I've got a question about writing ordinal numbers in article titles. Take, for example, First Salmond government. I can't help but feel like 1st Salmond government might be more concise (if less formal), in some trivial way, but the MoS does not seem to give any guidance on this matter. Has anyone any opinion on whether "first" or "1st" is preferable in such an instance as this? RGloucester — ☎ 02:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

This has all the makings of a really good fight. I've fastened my seatbelt.

While we're waiting for the first blow to be struck, I'd like (as tradition demands, here at DATESANDNUMBERS) to make at least a token effort to derail the conversation before it even starts, by raising an irksome quibble stimulated by the OP's query, but substantively irrelevant to it. In this case, I choose to take issue with the phrasing "but the MOS does not"; I believe it should be simply "but MOS does not". Commence firing!

OK, just kidding. My feeling is that this just looks odd -- probably the same feeling that gave rise to the exhortation (WP:NUMNOTES) to avoid beginning a sentence with a numeral. Think how it would look in a See also section:

See also

Well... now that I look at it, I don't know... E Eng 03:09, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I've learned to live with the dictum in most style guides against starting a sentence with a numeral (but I've been known to breach it to avoid the cumbersome, reader-unkind wording that often results). I think people are not yet ready for "1st" in opening position in a title (and maybe even in other positions), unless there's a compelling reason for it. But I could be persuaded, I suppose. Tony (talk) 03:21, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Good style (as reflected in the usage of the best writers since the nineteenth century, not to mention a majority of academic style manuals) requires that numbers (cardinal or ordinal) that can be written in one or two words be so written. (Newspaper style, concerned with saving type and column-inches, even today, limits that to numbers under 100, but the outcome is not much different.) Good style also requires that sentences and titles begin with words, not numerals, though many good writers make an exception for big numbers, where starting with a word would be awkward. Even so, Orwell's novel is Nineteen Eighty-Four, not 1984. Conciseness is not the highest goal to which a writer can aspire. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 03:45, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to get into any nonsense about what's "good", but I will say that I'm quite aware of the relevant standard, and would not suggest such usage in prose. In my query above, I am specifically referring to article titles, where conciseness is indeed one of the relevant criteria. I also find the juxtaposition between the capitalised "First" and lowercased "government" to be somewhat jarring, which is perhaps what spurred my question. I feel "1st" to be somewhat more acceptable in a descriptive title than in proper name, but I suppose there isn't much to be done. RGloucester — ☎ 03:52, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

would not suggest such usage in prose So how would you go about linking to this article if not as [[1st Salmond government|(f|F)irst Salmond government]]? Save yourself the grief, IMO--conciseness is not the only article-naming criteria, and the delta is only 2 characters. --Izno (talk) 11:08, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Izno's example seems compelling. Using 1st is a bad idea. E Eng 11:52, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Should time after 24:00 be considered as the next day?

In some situation, people might report an event as happening on a specific date, but it is actually happening on the day after. For instance, a Television program might advertise it is going to be air on May 20, but the actual air date for the program could be May 20 27:30, i.e. May 21 03:30. Should we regularize those time and change the date to the actual date in 24 hour system, or should we follow the date given by the subject of the article? In MOS:ANIME the regularization is recommended, is there any other manual of style on wikipedia that talk about this matter, and should we add this to this date and time MOS? C933103 (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm familiar with "unnormalized" times such as you describe, but I doubt most readers are. I would suggest normalizing to (in this example) May 21 03:30. Doing so doesn't change the meaning in any way (May 20 27:30 is the day after i.e. May 21, just expressed in a disguised way) and is more accessible to readers. E Eng 16:02, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Most of the days I've come across have only 24 hours in them. Just ask Gene. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:10, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

^[FBDB] Oh yeah? What about leap seconds, know-it-all? E Eng 00:40, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Now, they are hardly entire hours, are they? Martinevans123 (talk) 08:54, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Timezone usage for places where sovereignty is conflicted

How to determine "time zone where an event took place" when different party involved in the incident have different opinion about what timezone should be used over the place? For instance, if further conflicts take place in Crimea and the result is still inconclusive, should we use Moscow time (as used by the current Crimean authority that follow Russian regulation) or Ukraine time (as the original Crimean government would use)? Or, if we found an alien body on Senkaku/Diaoyu Island via satellite, should we use Chinese Time or Japanese time to denote the time we discover that body?

On the other hand, how to determine "place at which the event had its most significant effects"? For instance, if North Korea dropped a nuclear bomb near Vladivostok, Russia and killed hundred of thousands people there, but then most of its subsequent fallout spread across much of the China and then threatened the life of billion people in China, then should we use Vladivostok time or Beijing time to record the event's sequence?C933103 (talk) 16:25, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Your first question is a fascinating one; I don't know the answer. Have you tried discussing this on the article's talk page? (Whatever the answer is, the article should make clear which zone is being used.)

The answer to your second, hypothetical (and let us hope it remains so) question is: it's impossible to make advance rules for all these kinds of things. If it happens, hash it out on the talk page of the article first. If that fails... well then we'll see. (My guess would be you'd give the bombing time in the zone where the bomb exploded, and fallout in the zone of whatever places at which you want to describe its arrival and effects, making clear its "local time" or whatever in each case. Or, if the time-of-day of arrival isn't really important -- and it's not a discrete event anyway -- you might just say, "Within X hours, radiation detectors at Beijing began to register significant blah blah.") E Eng 18:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Another alternative, if a detailed timeline is needed, would be to systematically use both times, or give one time and note the offset to the other. Not a huge deal.

On the first point, the most normal rule - particularly if there is no obvious relevance to the dispute in question - is to use the time zone actually used on the ground. For example, consider Korea. Each of the two governments (North and South) considers itself to be the sole legal government of all of Korea. North Korean time is UTC+8.5 (since last August), while South Korean time is UTC+9. When giving start times of events during the 2018 Winter Olympics, we will use South Korean time exclusively. When giving start times of football matches in Pyongyang (e.g. 2018 World Cup Qualifiers), we use North Korean time exclusively. Kahastok talk 18:53, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Those must be some skinny, skinny football players. E Eng 23:37, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

If giving the time in one time system or the other would be seen as taking sides, then the ultimate equality would have to be to use UTC. Stepho talk 10:33, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Area conversions

I started a thread over at Template talk:Convert#Area, but was advised to also raise it here for advice. Is there any good reason to move away from the default values for area conversions, e.g. by converting acres into square kilometres, or hectares into square miles, etc? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:39, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I would prefer to see hectares, square miles and acres all converted to square kilometres (or square metres). That way I would be able to understand any one of them. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:20, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. Is there no policy here? Is the acre still seen as the "primary unit" for land area in both US and UK? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I prefer default conversion to the closest size unit, to avoid unnecessary (insignificant) zeros adjacent to the decimal point, as in "13 acres (0.053 km²)" or "98 square kilometres (24,000 acres)".

WP:UNIT isn't clear on which is to be considered the primary unit for land area in the UK. I'd just go with whatever system the article was using. There are often good reasons for choosing a different unit from the {{convert}} default whether it's area or some other dimension. For example, you might have a number of national parks mentioned in a paragraph, some large and others small, some may may be measured in hectares but I wouldn't convert to acres if most of the other parks are over 3 square kilometres (then again, it might be better in this case to use square kilometres for all the parks). The {{convert}} default was never intended to be a preferred unit to convert to but a guess at what might be the most commonly desired and/or useful one. Jimp 08:33, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, a guess. But what do you think about cross converting from units to square units and vice versa? It seems unjustified to me. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:52, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Caught in an edit conflict, I was adding "Another example might be a paragraph about a number of farms most of which are between 5 and 2,500 acres but there are a couple which are in the ten and hundreds of thousands of acres, you'd probably want to convert the big ones to square kilometres even though you might be using hectares for the smaller ones.". I'm not sure what you mean by cross-converting from units to square units. Square units are units. If you mean converting feet to square metres, obviously you can't do that, but if you mean acres to square kilometres, there's nothing wrong with that (they're both area, just as you might convert litres of engine displacement to cubic inches or foot-pounds to joules). Perhaps you meant something different. Jimp 09:06, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The default for acres is hectares, and vice versa. The default for mi2 is km2. By cross converting I mean acres to km2 etc. {"Acres" and "hectares" don't have the word "square" in them). But I understand your example which looks perfectly fair, although using a mixture of units in the same article is a slightly different case to mine. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:22, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The sudden appearance of a unit name is unusual but not unexceptional in the metric system. The most common example is the tonne, which is used instead of the megagramme. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:57, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

The reason for defaults such as km² ←→ sq mi, acre ←→ ha, m² ←→ sq ft, etc. is that these are close in size and/or used for similar purposes; it had nothing to do with keeping square length units separate from straight area units (e.g. the default for square hectometres is acres). There's no problem with the cross-conversion you describe just as you could convert knots to/from kilometres per hour or calories per minute to/from watts. Just as long as you've got the right dimension (i.e. length to length, area to area, speed to speed, etc.), I'd say the conversion would be fine. Jimp 03:59, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I think I was just assuming that the primary reason for putting in an area conversion, in say a geo article for a town or village, would be to show Imperial and metric equivalence. I was searching for a guideline which gives clear advice on when km² would be preferable to the default of 'ha, from acres. Perhaps something along the lines of "choose the units that produce a result with the fewest number of zeros", etc. But I don't see one. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:48, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I still think conversion from hectare to square metres (or square km) is needed. Acre means nothing to me except as one hundredth of the size of the wood from Christopher's childhood days. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Not even the ones sacred to the Moravian Church? [15]. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:32, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Well ... I confess I'd heard of the Waco massacre, but I'm not familiar with the conversion to kilograms. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:13, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I think David was trying to convert 7 days into something a bit more permanent. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:31, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

The defaults give you the recommended conversions in every case, at least for area. If you would use square miles in imperial, use square kilometres; if you would use acres, use hectares; if you would use squares, use square metres. Square kilometres is never acceptable where acres were formerly used. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I would wholly agree. That's the rule I have tended to always apply. But it's not written down as a policy, is it? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:21, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

No, because Imperial measurements are more context sensitive than their metric counterparts. We could lay down a firm guideline for area though: always use hectares for acres and vice versa. (An acre is a furlong by a chain.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:57, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I've just noticed this last remark here and want to register my dissent: neither acres nor hectares are defined in the SI system, so both should be converted to square kilometres so that mere mortals can understand. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:52, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I have to say that I, personally, have only the foggiest idea of how much an acre is, and no idea at all how much a hectare is. While you're here, can you take a look at the when-not-to-convert thread below? More comment would be welcome. E Eng 16:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Helpful analogy. E Eng 01:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

The ha is accepted for use with the SI system and just another name for hm². It is the closest such unit to the acre. Nothing wrong with using it for converting from acres. −Woodstone (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Imperial gallons

Is there ever a reason to include Imperial gallons in the unit conversion when the primary unit is not Imperial? I would think not, but I ask because that's the default behavior of the convert template. Kendall-K1 (talk) 15:01, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I can't see much use for it in contemporary material, but perhaps in a historical context? LeadSongDog come howl! 16:25, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

For everyday volumes, imperial gallons are still better understood in the UK by older people than litres; for example, although I buy petrol in litres, I only know my expected petrol consumption in miles per (imperial) gallon. Another reason to use them sometimes is to clarify the difference between US and imperial gallons. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:36, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

What got me thinking about this is Plant Bowen, an article about a US power plant, where I just removed conversions to Imperial gallons. Should I have left them in? Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:59, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think so. Litres suffice in such a case. It simply needs to be made clear that one is talking about American gallons, but that's already done. Imperial gallons should only be used in a context where they make sense, i.e. historical British, Canadian, Australian, &c., usage. There is no reason to include imperial gallons in an American context, as all countries that used imperial gallons as a primary unit now primarily use litres, meaning that non-American readers will be able to understand the given conversion to litres. RGloucester — ☎ 17:12, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

My experience is that although it may be true that all countries that used imperial gallons as a primary unit now primarily use litres it's far from true that non-American readers will be able to understand the given conversion to litres. Editors need to consider the context of the conversion and the set of readers likely to be most interested in the material; readers should come first. But I agree that for a US power plant there's no point in providing a conversion to imperial gallons. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:24, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

My point was that if imperial gallons were still a primary measurement of volume in Britain, or the Commonwealth, as the American gallon is in America, I could understand a conversion at an American power station article. However, in the context where imperial gallons are no longer a primary measurement in Britain, or the Commonwealth, litres should suffice in nearly every case. RGloucester — ☎ 16:06, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

WTH?

"In science-related articles, however, supplying such conversion is not required unless there is some special reason to do so." So we get US units only in a science article? No way ... I pushed through what was originally SI units with optional conversion to US units in science-based articles, back in about 2007. How on Earth did this morph into the potential for US units only in an article on the Solar System, for example??? Tony (talk) 15:43, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how that text suggests you'd use US-units-only in a science article (clearly you'd use SI as primary, and what this says is that you might not need a conversion to US to go with the SI), and I have no idea where it came from, but anyway the current proposal removes it. Can you take a look at A8 (above)? E Eng 16:05, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

More generally, it would be good to make it more clear that SI units are primary, and often adequate on their own, not just for science and technical articles, but wherever the use of other units has no particular value. I see a small movement in that direction, but examples like "a giant star of radius 257 million kilometres (160 million miles)" still seem like they encourage irrelevant and meaningless extra numerical noise. Even "Rosie weighed 80 kilograms (180 lb; 12 st 8 lb)" could be left as just kg, or converted to one country's units if really necessary. And sometimes the conversions the other way are excessive, too; like in "The field is rectangular, 120 yards (110 m) long and 53 1⁄3 yards (48.8 m) wide, with goal lines marked 10 yards (9.1 m) inward from each end", which would be better as "The field is rectangular, 120 yards (110 m) long and 53 1⁄3 yards wide, with goal lines marked 10 yards inward from each end" since that converts the overall size and makes the proportions clearer than the other conversions do. And "precise assays are possible on samples as small as 0.1 ml (about the size of a pinhead)" contains at least two errors; perhaps 0.1 µL was intended? Dicklyon (talk) 16:38, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

WP:DATERANGE again

FYI

– This is being discussed more broadly at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#WP:DATERANGE ambiguity and stylistic concerns

I just can't let go how much I despise the two-digit abbreviation of end-range calendar years that was introduced into the MOS. There are many problems with it, here are the main ones that come to mind:

It can easily be confused for something else entirely, especially for ranges ending in years '01–'12. For example, 2010–12 can easily be interpreted as December 2010 instead of a date range of 2010–2012.

I cannot think of a real-world example of this ambiguity. The context would normally dispel any ambiguity.—Finell 21:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks so unprofessional. Saving a measly two digits is not worth giving the appearance of using unnecessary shortcuts/slang in a respectable encyclopedia.
It doesn't read naturally for years in the 21st century spanning the 2000s decade to 2010 or later. This is mainly because years from 2000–2009 are usually pronounced "two thousand and", while years from 2010—present are usually said as "twenty". So a range such as 2000–16 being read as "two thousand to sixteen" sounds ridiculous. This is especially problematic for anyone having Wikipedia read aloud by a text-to-speech program.
It's inconsistent, since it is only applicable to years 1000 AD+ and to none of the years in the BC era (why not?), leading to more confusion and unnecessary stylistic asymmetry.

If it's to be kept, I think the only defensible use is in an Infobox that is overloaded with date ranges (but only if it is overloaded), making space more valuable to save. Otherwise it is unprofessional, unnecessary, awkward, and open to misinterpretation and should be abandoned. Crumpled Fire (talk) 07:57, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree. (And the same argument applies to page ranges in citations too.) In almost all circumstances, not abbreviating such ranges has no balancing advantages over the obvious disadvantages. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:09, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I think a most egregious example of a disadvantage is in marriage ranges in the Infobox. Something like "John Smith (m. 2004–12)" is almost entirely ambiguous to anyone unfamiliar with Wikipedia's MOS in regard to whether it is stating that they got married in December 2004, or were married from 2004–2012. Crumpled Fire (talk) 09:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

There is no ambiguity, because a range takes a dash (2004–12) but a year-month takes a hyphen (2004-12). Just kidding, I think you're right. It might be a useful shortcut if there weren't so many exceptions. Kendall-K1 (talk) 12:28, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I'd been hoping we could get to the one-year mark: [16] E Eng 13:26, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

At first I thought you'd meant "one year mark" as in 2015–6 instead of 2015–16. Oh, please god no. Crumpled Fire (talk) 05:24, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Crumpled Fire, I don't much care one way or the other, as long as any resolution doesn't end with a lack of consistency within articles—or, worse, people edit-warring over their personal preferences, which I find easy to imagine led to the clarification in the first place.

🖖ATS / Talk 05:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

As we've both seen in the trending Christina Grimmie article, the natural inclination for many passerby users unfamiliar with the MOS was to correct "16" to "2016", because it just looks downright ridiculous. The only use of the two-digit abbreviation I can see as appropriate is for two consecutive years, such as school years (i.e. "the 2015–16 school year"). For year ranges like 2009–16 it's simply jarring. As for consistency within articles, believe you me if the original style is restored I will personally spend hours restoring a torrent of random articles. Thanks for your input. Crumpled Fire (talk) 05:28, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome—and my thanks for pointing me here. It was the edits to Christina Grimmie, in fact, that led to my comment with respect to editors' personal preferences and edit wars; without something resembling conformity, they can only increase, I would think. Cheers! 🖖ATS / Talk 05:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I can't tell you how much I despise the notion of insisting on what are in the end two redundant digits, all the time ... even in tables and infoboxes. Tony (talk) 01:42, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Tony. I DON'T LIKE IT is not a reason.—Finell 21:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Well my reasons are listed at the top of the section, as well as in the Village Pump discussion, where many others have added their reasoning. — Crumpled Fire • contribs • 23:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

As I proposed at the VP discussion, split the difference, per WP:COMMONSENSE: Permit the shorter date format in tables and other compressed situations, if it is not ambiguous (i.e., i.e., when some examples occur in the same place that do not end in -01 through -12), but avoid it in running prose. A blanket rule permitting it leads inevitably to cases where ambiguous dates end up being used, like 2007–10, which is nearly or completely indistinguishable from 2007-10 for many people, due to font, eyesight, or both. This is an accessibility matter, not just a style one. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:40, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Why exception for range of birth–death years?

Why does the guideline make an exception to using nnnn–nn year ranges for birth–death years? Since these are often prominent uses of year ranges, this exception has the effect of hiding the nnnn–nn guideline for other year ranges.—Finell 21:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Maybe because it's so rare for a birth-death range not to have a month and day element, at least in one side of the range? But for the few instances that only have years, I don't see why there should be an exception. — Crumpled Fire • contribs • 23:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

It's just one of our periodic and usually accidental "advice forks", one of the hazards of distributing MoS over multiple pages. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 19:35, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Village pump discussion

Relevant discussion at

→ Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#WP:DATERANGE_ambiguity_and_stylistic_concerns

A discussion and !vote regarding this issue is ongoing at the Village Pump, which any participants here are welcome and encouraged to join. — Crumpled Fire • contribs • 11:15, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Non-Gregorian calendars

Articles on Nepal are sometimes contributed using the Nepali calendar - as in this version of Moonlight English Boarding School. MOSNUM states, under "Julian and Gregorian Calendars", A date can be given in any appropriate calendar, as long as it is (at the minimum) given in the Julian calendar or the Gregorian calendar or both, as described below. For example, an article on the early history of Islam may give dates in both Islamic and Julian calendars., but the only incoming abbreviations are MOS:OSNS and MOS:JG and there is no example.

It would be useful if there was an example to show the use of Julian or Gregorian along with Islamic, Nepali or other dates, and an incoming anchor which was less confusing (WP:OTHERCALENDAR perhaps), to help in showing novice Nepali or other editors that this rule exists. And perhaps we could gloss "Gregorian" in the text of MOSNUM here by adding a note something like "(the Western calendar)" or "(the internationally widely used calendar)" (both from the Gregorian calendar article, for clarity. PamD 07:35, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I see a previous editor has linked their "Clarify" to WP:ERA, but that doesn't really hit the spot. PamD 07:49, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed we should address this. I run into this issue occasionally, too, especially in articles on Islam and Islamic countries, using Islamic dates without conversion. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:33, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

[1] Started a second 5-year term in 2015

[2] See 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress

[a]

[a]